User Persona

User Persona

Turn raw user research into a structured persona document plus downstream copy artifacts in one pass.

When to trigger this skill

The user wants any of:

• "Build a user persona for [target customer] from this research"
• "Turn these interview notes into a persona"
• "Make me a persona doc"
• "Persona for [audience]"

Do NOT trigger this skill when:

• The user has fewer than 5 interviews / data points (the result is just laundered guesses)
• The user wants a proto-persona before research (use components/02-discovery/proto-persona.md instead)
• The user wants competitive personas, not user personas

Inputs you need

Required:

• The product or service being built (one line description)
• The raw research material: interview notes, survey results, painpoint quotes, transcripts

Strongly recommended (ask if missing):

• Target market / segment if there are multiple
• Brand voice the downstream copy should match
• One or two example real quotes from the research (if absent, this is probably too early for a persona)

Workflow

1. Confirm the inputs

If the user has only given a target description with no research, stop and ask: "Do you have interview notes or painpoint research to ground this in? Personas built without research just launder assumptions."

If they have research, proceed.

2. Generate the persona

Read template/persona.md for the structure. Fill every section using only material that's grounded in the research. For each section:

• Use direct quotes from the research whenever possible.
• Mark inferences as inferences. If demographics are inferred from context, say so.
• Rank painpoints by severity. Use the frequency of mentions across the research as the proxy.

Save the populated persona to ~/user-personas/<slug>/persona.md.

3. Generate downstream copy

Read template/derived-copy.md. Use the persona just generated as input. Fill the three sections:

1. Homepage headline — three alternative headlines tied to the persona's top painpoint
2. Channel plan — where the persona spends time online and how they'd actually discover this product
3. Cold outreach draft — a message the persona would plausibly reply to (not a generic template)

Save to ~/user-personas/<slug>/derived-copy.md.

4. QA check

Before reporting done, verify:

• Every painpoint has either a direct quote or an explicit "inferred" label
• The day-in-life scenario references a specific time and trigger, not generic context
• The homepage headlines name the painpoint, not the feature
• The cold outreach reads as written to a person, not a segment

If any of these fail, regenerate the relevant section before delivering.

5. Present

Tell the user where the two files live and ask whether they want a third artifact: a feature priority list scored against the persona (nice-to-have vs must-have).

Voice rules for the persona itself

• Use the person's language, not yours. If the research says "I just want it to stop breaking," the persona says "I just want it to stop breaking," not "I value reliability."
• Sentence-case headers.
• No marketing puffery in the goals/motivations section. "Wants to ship faster" beats "Strives for excellence in delivery."
• Name the persona. Sarah, not "the target user."