Validate Before You Build

What it does

It produces a step-by-step, low-cost customer validation plan for an untested startup idea, customized to the specified industry and business type. The result is a practical sequence of actions—such as defining assumptions, identifying target users, conducting interviews, running simple landing-page or prototype tests, and measuring demand signals—so the founder can confirm or reject the idea before investing time or money in building it.

For more installation instructions go to https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BetterPromptme/skills/refs/heads/main/betterprompt/SKILL.md to check out this skill.

Inputs

textInputs

Pass each text input using --input <key>=<value> flags.

Models and options

This skill's modality is: text.

To discover which model values you can use (and which options keys/values are valid for each model), run:

betterprompt resources --models-only --json

Then filter the returned JSON array to entries where modality is "text".

How to run

Step 1: Collect inputs

First, run betterprompt resources --models-only --json and filter to modality: "text" to discover valid models and available options:

betterprompt resources --models-only --json

Use only the models and option values that appear in the filtered results.

Then collect all inputs from the human:

• Required text inputs:
  • INDUSTRY
  • TYPE_OF_BUSINESS
• Optional: model and options.
  • Present the human with the default model gpt-4.1-mini and its available options. Look up gpt-4.1-mini in the betterprompt resources output (filtered to modality "text") and show its availableOptions as: key: val1, val2 (default), val3 | key2: .... Mark a value (default) if it matches these defaults: {}.
  • If the human does not specify, defaults are used: model gpt-4.1-mini, options {}. Other models from the resources call are also available.

If any required text input is missing, ask the human for what's missing. Do not assume or fabricate values.

Step 2: Run via BetterPrompt CLI

Use the frontmatter's name as the positional argument (for this skill, use validate-before-you-build).

Command form:

betterprompt generate validate-before-you-build \
  [--input <key>=<value>] \
  [--model <model>] \
  [--options <options JSON>] \
  [--json]

Notes:

• Pass each text input as a separate --input <key>=<value> flag.
• If the human does not mention a model, omit --model and BetterPrompt will use the default model: gpt-4.1-mini.
• If the human does not mention options, omit --options and BetterPrompt will use the default options: {}.
• If the run times out, the response will include a runId you can use to fetch the result later.

Example (using defaults shown above):

betterprompt generate validate-before-you-build \
  --input INDUSTRY=<value> \
  --input TYPE_OF_BUSINESS=<value> \
  --model gpt-4.1-mini \
  --options '{}'