project-kickoff-interrogation

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project-kickoff-interrogation

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A 9-step pre-mortem skill that interrogates you before you build. Grounded in 《置身钉内》(DingTalk ONE post-mortem). Works with Claude Code, Hermes Agent, and any markdown-skill agent.

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A 9-step pre-mortem skill that interrogates you **before** you write a single line of code.

Inspired by **滕雅辛 (Téng Yǎxīn / Yōusù)**, *《置身钉内》* (2026, ~75k characters) — a post-mortem of DingTalk's **ONE** project, a strategic-level AI office product that hit 3M DAU at launch and was abandoned within a year. Every one of the 9 interrogations in this skill corresponds 1:1 to a specific structural failure documented in that essay.

> Original article (Chinese): https://www.163.com/dy/article/KUR5AI960556J2HN.html

This skill is **not** an "idea generator." It's the missing middle layer between brainstorming and execution — the moment when you're excited and your answers are still soft, and someone needs to push back.

## What It Does

When you say *"I want to build X"* / *"let's make a tool that…"*, the skill walks you through **one question at a time** (not a dump), each with multiple-choice options grounded in a known failure mode:

| # | Interrogation | The ONE failure it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | **Origin intent** — pick ONE primary motive from 5 | ONE juggled 4 motives → "greed is one of the seven sins" |
| 2 | **User targeting** — who is it NOT for? (≥3 explicit exclusions required) | "We set off with a box of Schrödinger's users" |
| 3 | **Scenario** — minute-level specific, not "daily tool" | Card-bloat: from 10/day to 50+/day after every team plugged in |
| 4 | **Value** — quantify what users currently spend, then state your improvement multiplier | Morning dashboard: "just a re-skinned to-do list, novelty died in a week" |
| 5 | **Moat** — will it still be a moat in 2 years? | Stack Overflow's monthly questions halved within a year of ChatGPT |
| 6 | **Bilateral game** — who must yield when the two sides conflict? | "Boss pays, employee uses. Boss wants control, employee wants freedom. 100% mutually exclusive." |
| 7 | **MVP boundary** — can you cut it to one action? | "Couldn't walk yet, forced into a 100m sprint" |
| 8 | **Deadline trap** — is an external fixed deadline reverse-driving everything? | "August 25 launch event was immovable. Every spec, every change, made way for the keynote." |
| 9 | **Stop-loss line** — write the trigger NOW, with a specific number, date, and person | "Bad data: suppressed. User pushback: ignored. Retention drop: doubled down on ops. Backlash: PR cleanup." |

Outputs a **frozen baseline.md** you can slap yourself with later when the project drifts.

## Why It Exists

Most projects don't die in execution — they die at the moment of *"OK let's start building"*, because nobody is forcing the founder to answer the questions that would have killed the project.

Existing skills cover the surrounding layers:

- **Idea generation** → diverging on what's possible
- **Implementation plans** → executing a fixed direction
- **Spike** → validating one technical assumption

But the **"direction is fuzzy, decision is imminent"** zone — where 80% of doomed projects pass through — has no skill guarding it. This is that skill.

## Installation

This skill is **runtime-agnostic**. It contains no tool-specific calls. Tested with:

- ✅ **Hermes Agent** ([hermes-agent.nousresearch.com](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com))
- ✅ **Claude Code** ([claude.com/product/claude-code](https://claude.com/product/claude-code))
- 🟡 Any agent that can read a markdown skill spec and conduct a conversational protocol

### Claude Code (per-project, recommended)

Place inside the project you're starting:

```bash
mkdir -p .claude/skills
git clone https://github.com/execbbbr/project-kickoff-interrogation \
  .claude/skills/project-kickoff-interrogation
```

Then in Claude Code:

```
> Use the project-kickoff-interrogation skill. I want to build [your idea].
```

### Claude Code (user-global)

Use across all your projects:

```bash
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
git clone https://github.com/execbbbr/project-kickoff-interrogation \
  ~/.claude/skills/project-kickoff-interrogation
```

### Hermes Agent

```bash
mkdir -p ~/.hermes/skills/product-thinking
git clone https://github.com/execbbbr/project-kickoff-interrogation \
  ~/.hermes/skills/product-thinking/project-kickoff-interrogation
```

Hermes will auto-discover the skill on the next session. Trigger:

```
> I want to build [your idea].
```

…and Hermes will load this skill automatically based on the description.

### Other agents (Cursor, Cline, manual)

Just clone anywhere and point your agent at `SKILL.md`. The protocol is plain English (with Chinese choice labels) and works in any chat.

```bash
git clone https://github.com/execbbbr/project-kickoff-interrogation
# Then paste SKILL.md content into your agent's system prompt or rules file.
```

## Repository Structure

```
.
├── SKILL.md                          # The 9-question protocol (18k chars)
├── references/
│   └── one-case-study.md             # Full 8-volume failure map with original quotes (15k chars)
├── templates/
│   └── baseline-template.md          # Output structure for the frozen baseline (6k chars)
├── README.md                         # This file
└── LICENSE                           # MIT
```

The skill front-matter declares it as a Hermes-compatible skill, but the body is pure markdown protocol — any agent can execute it.

## How to Use It (the agent's job)

The skill instructs the running agent to:

1. **Ask one question at a time** — do not dump all 9 at once.
2. **Give the user multiple-choice options** with brief intros — never blank-slate prompts.
3. **Reject mushy answers** ("both", "depends", "kind of") — push back until exactly one choice is given.
4. **Flag red flags out loud** — if the user picks "MVP = build everything" or "we have a hard deadline", the agent must explicitly say *"this is a ONE-pattern red flag — do you acknowledge?"* before continuing.
5. **Force #9 to have a concrete number, date, and human name.** "We'll all watch out for it" = nobody will pull the brake.
6. **Save `baseline.md` to disk** when the 9 questions are done. No file = the exercise was theater.

Full protocol with all the choices, follow-ups, and pitfalls is in `SKILL.md`.

## Sample Output

When the agent finishes, it produces a `baseline.md` like:

```markdown
# my-tool — Frozen Baseline
⚠️ This is a Frozen Baseline.
Frozen: 2026-06-07 by Claude Code via project-kickoff-interrogation v1.0.0

## 1. Origin Intent
Primary: B. Efficiency improvement for an already-solved problem
Side benefits: C (serving a specific group — connector developers)
Distraction watch: none

## 2. User Targeting
Shape: A. Single-side (dev pays attention = dev benefits)
NOT for:
  - non-technical PMs
  - end customers of the connector
  - executives looking at dashboards

…

## 9. Stop-Loss Line
Primary metric: weekly active connector devs
Threshold: 3 months post-launch (2026-09-07), if <40% of target team uses it weekly → pivot or stop
Brake-puller: [your name]
```

## Why Multiple Choice, Not Free Text

Open-ended kickoff prompts produce open-ended kickoff answers: *"users want to be productive."* The 4–6 mutually exclusive options in each question force a real commitment. The ONE post-mortem shows this is the entire game — being precise about *who you're NOT serving* and *what you'll NOT build* is harder and more important than being precise about the positive.

## Why Chinese Choice Labels?

The source material is Chinese, and many key concepts (发心, 已读未读, 事找人, 反身性) lose precision in translation. The interrogation protocol is bilingual: English narration with Chinese option labels where the source warrants it. Both Hermes and Claude Code handle this without issue. If you want a fully-English fork, see "Contributing" below.

## Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Particularly useful contributions:

- **Other case studies.** This skill happens to be grounded in ONE because the post-mortem is unusually honest and structured. A `references/` companion for another famous-failure post-mortem (e.g. Quibi, Google+, Windows Phone, Stadia) would slot in cleanly.
- **Fully-English version.** A `SKILL-en.md` alongside the current one.
- **Agent-specific quirks.** If you find a runtime (Cursor, Cline, Open Interpreter, etc.) that mishandles the protocol, file an issue with the transcript.

## License

MIT. See `LICENSE`.

## Credits

- **滕雅辛 (Téng Yǎxīn / Yōusù)** — author of *《置身钉内》*. Without her 75k-character honest record of a strategic-level project's slow-motion collapse, this skill would just be vibes. Every numbered question is a debt owed to a paragraph she wrote.
- **DingTalk ONE project team (2025–2026)** — for being the empirical data.
- Built and packaged in [Hermes Agent](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com), tested across Hermes + Claude Code.

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