asmartbear
- 26 skills
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- ▌ Asb Willingness To Pay · asmartbearMaps the desire behind why customers pay and commits to the one or two kinds worth owning, without touching the price number. Three desires, by value: Love (advocates who want you to charge more), Utility (rational ROI buyers), Coercion (trapped against their will). Three phases: (1) map what's TRUE TODAY — walk the full Love/Utility palette WITH the user, marking have/partial/none, and run the fragility test 'who leaves the moment a good alternative appears?' exposing Coercion posing as loyalty; (2) what you'd do DIFFERENTLY — which to own, deepen, or build, which Coercion to drop, framed by value created not cost saved; (3) validate each change and commit to one or two of each. A facilitator, not an oracle: it surfaces the whole menu and draws answers from the user. Load when the user asks why customers pay, what makes them advocate, or whether retention is real or coerced. Do NOT load to set or raise the price, pick a pricing strategy (More/Less), define the ideal customer, or rewrite marketing copy.
- ▌ Asb Interview Questions · asmartbearFacilitates the third step of a proven customer-interview method: translating hypotheses into open-ended, unbiased interview questions — each a miniature experiment designed to test one hypothesis without leading the witness. Two modes: given a single hypothesis, it grills the question into shape and outputs the final question in chat; given a HYPOTHESES.md file, it iterates the whole list, grouping related hypotheses, and maintains a QUESTIONS.md file (numbered Q1, Q2, … mapped to H-numbers) as a live, resumable artifact. Load when the user has hypotheses and wants interview questions, asks how to phrase a question for customers without biasing the answer, or says 'turn my hypotheses into questions' or 'help me ask about X without leading.' Do NOT load for writing goal questions or hypotheses (earlier steps), for conducting or analyzing the interviews themselves, for survey/questionnaire design, or for job interviews.
- ▌ Asb Interview Hypotheses · asmartbearFacilitates the second step of a proven customer-interview method: recording the user's current best guesses — hypotheses — as numbered, falsifiable statements (H1, H2, …), each mapped to the goal questions it addresses, so interviews can confirm or contradict them instead of confirmation bias quietly filtering what's heard. Takes a GOALS.md goal-question list as input (file or pasted), elicits what the user believes goal by goal, sharpens vague beliefs into testable claims, prunes to hypotheses whose resolution would actually change what the user builds, targets, charges, or says, and preserves the result in HYPOTHESES.md. Load when the user has goal questions and wants to write hypotheses, list their assumptions, or record predictions before interviewing customers — 'I have my goals, what's next,' 'help me write down what I believe about my customers.' Do NOT load for writing the interview questions themselves, for analyzing interviews already conducted, or for statistical hypothesis testing.
- ▌ Asb Carol Inciting Events · asmartbearFacilitates the fifth step of a proven ideal-customer (ICP) method: mapping inciting events — the specific trigger moments that move a perfect-fit customer from could-buy-someday to buying-today. Takes a keystones file (K1, K2, … with market segments) and, when available, customer-interview findings; walks the keystones one at a time, harvesting real trigger stories from interview evidence (marked observed) and working backward through brainstorm lenses — crises, seasonal cycles, strategic windows, personal life-changes — for the rest (marked hypothesized), recording each event with the keystone it couples to and how to find prospects in that condition, in INCITING-EVENTS.md (E1, E2, …). Load when the user has keystones and asks what makes customers buy now, what triggers a purchase, or 'run the inciting-events step.' Do NOT load to derive keystones or deal-breakers (previous steps), to write the final ideal-customer definition (next step), or to write the ads themselves.
- ▌ Asb Interview Goals · asmartbearFacilitates the first step of a proven customer-interview method: deciding exactly what you're trying to learn, written as numbered goal questions (G1, G2, …) that your hypotheses and interview questions will later be designed to answer. Interviews the user about their business — new idea or established company, B2B or B2C — then drafts a tailored goal-question list, critiques and revises it with them, and preserves the result in a GOALS.md file. Load when the user wants to interview customers, plan customer discovery or customer development, validate a startup idea, or answer unaskable questions like what to charge, how to position, who the ideal customer is, or what to build. Do NOT load for job or hiring interviews, for writing survey questionnaires, for analyzing customer interviews that have already been conducted, or when a goal-question list already exists and the user wants the next step (hypotheses).
- ▌ Asb Interview Report · asmartbearFacilitates the final step of a proven customer-interview method: distilling everything a round of interviews produced (GOALS.md, HYPOTHESES.md, QUESTIONS.md, and a directory of per-interview debriefs) into a single FINAL-REPORT.md the whole company can use. Top: a summary as brief as possible without losing salient information. Below: numbered findings (F1, F2, …) tagged validated / disproved / directional / watch / untested, every one citing debriefs and quoting customers verbatim, plus per-area briefs that marshal the evidence for ideal-customer definition, positioning, pricing, marketing & sales, and product priorities. Load when the user says 'write up what we found from the interviews,' 'summarize the interview results for the team,' or 'turn the interviews into a report.' Do NOT load for updating hypotheses from interviews (the synthesis step), for recording one conversation (the debrief step), or for actually doing the positioning, ideal-customer, or pricing work the report feeds.
- ▌ Asb Interview Debrief · asmartbearFacilitates the learning step of a proven customer-interview method — the recording half: turning raw material from ONE customer conversation (transcript, notes, memory dump) into a brief per-person debrief file, mapped against the numbered interview-question list (Q1, Q2, … with H-number tags). One concise answer per question actually asked, key phrases kept verbatim, unasked questions honestly skipped, a one-line commentary only where in-the-moment context helps later analysis, and an addenda section for everything heard that fit no question. Load when the user has just done a customer interview and says 'here's the transcript,' 'process my call notes,' 'file this conversation against my questions,' or 'add this interview to the record.' Do NOT load for writing goals, hypotheses, or interview questions (earlier steps), for synthesizing patterns across multiple interviews and updating hypotheses (the next step), or for summarizing meetings or transcripts unrelated to customer interviews.
- ▌ Asb Carol Dealbreakers · asmartbearFacilitates the fourth step of a proven ideal-customer (ICP) method: refining classified weaknesses into deal-breakers — the circumstances that disqualify the product outright, no matter how well everything else fits — and mapping the anti-market segments who therefore will never buy. Takes the weaknesses from a strengths chart (W1, W2, …) plus a keystones file (K1, K2, …), walks the weaknesses one at a time, records deal-breakers with their anti-market segments in DEALBREAKERS.md (D1, D2, …), then HONES the keystones: appending the qualifiers each deal-breaker forces ('…processing at least $5,000/mo'), editing KEYSTONES.md under its frozen numbers with a change log. Load when the user has keystones and weaknesses and asks who will never buy, what their anti-market is, or 'run the deal-breakers step.' Do NOT load to derive keystones from strengths (the previous step), to find inciting events (the next step), or to write the final ideal-customer definition.
- ▌ Asb Carol Observations · asmartbearFacilitates the first step of a proven ideal-customer (ICP) method: gathering raw, honest, specific observations about what a company and product actually are — before any judgment about strengths or weaknesses. Walks the user through twelve unsparing question categories (what customers praise, the complaint with no defense, what separates your most profitable customers, and more) — or processes a team's write-storm notes one observation at a time — and records the results in OBSERVATIONS.md (numbered O1, O2, …), vivid and unevaluated. For a company operating online, it first scans public reviews and press into an External Research section that seeds it. Load when the user wants to figure out their ideal customer, take an honest look at their company, run a strengths-and-weaknesses exercise from scratch, or says 'who is our Carol' or 'what are we actually good at.' Do NOT load to classify observations into strengths and weaknesses (the next step), or for personal self-reflection unrelated to a company.
- ▌ Asb Interview Learning · asmartbearFacilitates the learning step of a proven customer-interview method — the synthesis half: reads a directory of per-interview debrief files against the working HYPOTHESES.md and QUESTIONS.md and proposes evidence-cited updates ONE at a time — double down, tune numbers, mark disproved, park heard-once observations in a 'That's funny' watch section, add new hypotheses with new questions — applying each agreed change directly to the files with a change log, and ending with a stop-or-continue-or-re-aim verdict on the interviewing itself. Load when the user says 'what did we learn from these interviews,' 'update my hypotheses from the interviews,' 'synthesize my interview notes,' or 'should I keep interviewing?' Do NOT load for recording a single conversation into a debrief (the previous step), for writing initial goals, hypotheses, or interview questions (earlier steps), or for deciding what to build next (comes after this method).
- ▌ Asb Carol Define · asmartbearFacilitates the final step of a proven ideal-customer (ICP) method: synthesizing the working files — strengths and weaknesses, honed keystones, deal-breakers, and inciting events — into CAROL.md, the crisp definition of the ideal customer. The definition leads the file, behavioral and attitudinal, never demographic unless genuinely determinative; every marker must clear the bar that Marketing can target it, Sales can qualify against it, and Product can build features to thrill it. Brief reference sections on keystones, deal-breakers, and inciting events follow, because positioning, marketing, and feature work consume them. When keystone segments diverge, the skill forces the choice of a primary rather than averaging. Load when the user has the working files and says 'define our Carol,' 'write our ideal customer profile,' or 'who is our ICP.' Do NOT load to produce the upstream files (observations through inciting events), or to write the positioning, ads, or feature plans that start FROM this definition.
- ▌ Asb More Or Less · asmartbearForces a business to pick ONE of the three self-consistent pricing strategies — More for More (the best, priced to match), More for Less (what you need at a reasonable price), or Less for Less (minimal but incredibly affordable) — then align the whole company behind it. Three gated phases: (1) collect the current reality — what you charge, what your marketing promises, which segments you serve; (2) map that onto the three strategies, surface where you're mixing them, and interrogate the trade-offs until you commit to one with its consequences accepted; (3) audit every signal (pricing page, homepage, support, roadmap) into a keep / stop / start plan ordered by how much each contradicts the story. Load when the user asks which pricing strategy fits them, whether to go premium / value / budget, why their pricing feels confused or mixed, or how to align product-price-marketing. Do NOT load to set the actual price number, write a price-increase announcement, define the ideal customer, or rewrite marketing copy.
- ▌ Asb Raise Prices · asmartbearHelps a founder build the case for raising prices and the moves that justify it; it drives toward a higher price and does not debate whether to raise. Three gated phases: (1) collect the reality (what you charge, what you promise, who buys) and diagnose which market the price has selected (the $1/$10/$100/$1,000-per-month ladder), the profit stakes (a 10% rise can be ~100% more profit), and whether the low price is strategy or fear, landing on a rough higher target; (2) brainstorm, judgment off, moves that justify a higher price — move up a market rung, price on value created not cost saved, build Love and Utility drivers, differentiate, repackage; (3) select, grilling each move down to a few that are good, strategy-consistent, buildable, and wanted. Load when the user asks how much to raise prices, what it would take to charge more, or why their price feels too low. Do NOT load to set the exact price, write the increase letter, define the ideal customer, or choose among the three pricing strategies.
- ▌ Asb Carol Keystones · asmartbearFacilitates the third step of a proven ideal-customer (ICP) method: refining classified strengths into keystones — the specific characteristics, behaviors, or circumstances that make a customer NEED an extreme version of a strength, badly enough to drive the purchase alone. Takes a strengths chart (S1, S2, … — file or pasted), walks the strengths one at a time asking who requires an extreme version of each, gates every candidate on naming a real market segment that typifies it (no segment = table stakes, cut), and records survivors in KEYSTONES.md (K1, K2, … with [S] references and example segments). Delivers the strategic verdict when few or none survive: the product isn't compelling yet. Load when the user has classified strengths and asks who needs them, who their target market is, or 'turn our strengths into keystones.' Do NOT load to classify strengths and weaknesses (the previous step), to derive deal-breakers or the anti-market (the next step), or to write the final ideal-customer definition (later).
- ▌ Asb Carol Strengths · asmartbearFacilitates the second step of a proven ideal-customer (ICP) method: distilling raw company observations into the few deep-truth attributes that matter, then classifying each as a strength, a weakness, or deliberately both. Takes an observations list (O1, O2, … — file or pasted), proposes attributes one at a time with their supporting observations, kills generic ones with the Opposite Test ('we love our customers' dies), classifies each with a concrete rubric (a third of the market sees it that way, or some customers buy/refuse for it alone), and records the result in STRENGTHS-WEAKNESSES.md (S1, S2, … / W1, W2, …). Load when the user has raw observations and wants to distill them, asks 'what are our real strengths and weaknesses,' or wants to classify what they learned from the honest-look exercise. Do NOT load to gather the raw observations (the previous step), to derive keystones or deal-breakers from classified attributes (later steps), or for a person's individual strengths and weaknesses.
- ▌ Book Prose Writer · asmartbearRewrites text in Jason Cohen's prose style for the Hidden Multipliers book. Use when asked to rewrite, restyle, or edit prose for the book.
- ▌ Exercise Asb Skill · asmartbearSimulated-use exerciser for asb-* skills: role-plays realistic user scenarios through a SKILL.md and judges the transcripts against a fixed rubric, producing a verdict table and a patch list. Invoke as /exercise-asb-skill <skill-name> [path-to-draft] — works on published skills (regression test before/after edits) and on in-progress drafts (Phase 7 of create-asb-skill).
- ▌ Asb Needs Stack · asmartbearBuilds a customer Needs Stack — the ladder in which every need is a means to the end one level up (buy infrastructure → set up a WordPress site → have a personal website → get a book deal). Anchors the level the user's product satisfies, phrased as the customer's own goal in the customer's own words, then walks downward (the steps the product makes obsolete) and upward (what the customer really wants), crystallizing every level — specific wording, a true means-to-an-end link, named real-world occupants — before moving on. Records the stack in NEEDS-STACK.md with the user's level marked and each level's positioning role: what you do, promise, reference as aspiration, or brag about obviating. Load when the user asks what their customer really wants, what level their product operates at, who their real alternatives (not just competitors) are, or to 'build our needs stack.' Do NOT load to rewrite marketing copy from a finished stack — that is a separate positioning task that consumes this file.
- ▌ Asb Positioning · asmartbearConverts marketing copy — headlines, ads, homepage claims, pitches, positioning statements — into value-first, vivid language: reframes save-time/save-money pitches as create-more-value pitches in the currency the customer measures value, fits each claim to the right level of the customer's needs (features at your level, the promise one level up, aspirations referenced but never promised, obviated steps bragged about), keeps every claim consistent with the declared pricing strategy (More for More, More for Less, or Less for Less), and forces specificity — no generic words, no clichés, show-don't-tell, real numbers only, claims passing the Opposite Test. Works one message at a time, recording survivors in POSITIONING.md. Sharper with an ideal-customer definition and a needs stack; works without. Load when the user wants marketing copy, positioning, headlines, or a pitch rewritten, sharpened, or audited. Do NOT load to build the needs stack or define the ideal customer — upstream steps this skill consumes.
- ▌ Jason Corpus Search · asmartbear bundleSemantically search Jason Cohen's A Smart Bear articles and Hidden Multipliers book corpus, returning on-disk file paths that can be read or grep'd directly with normal filesystem tools. Load whenever you need to find what Jason has written about a topic, ground an asb-* skill in source material, hunt for quotes or passages, or check whether an idea already has a canonical write-up before drafting one.
- ▌ Doc Skills · asmartbearReference for creating, editing, or updating Claude Code SKILL.md files — including any change to a skill's YAML frontmatter, description, invocation rules, or body. Covers all YAML frontmatter fields (description, when_to_use, disable-model-invocation, user-invocable, allowed-tools, disallowed-tools, context, agent, effort, paths, shell, etc.), authoring best practices, and string substitutions. Load BEFORE writing or modifying any file in .claude/skills/, not only when creating a new one. For agent .md files, see doc-agents.
- ▌ Asb Voters · asmartbearDistills a person's or company's strengths, experiences, and obsessions down to their one or two VOTERS — the decisive, idiosyncratically extreme traits that win the contest because customers who value them accept every other trade-off. Runs each candidate through a hard gauntlet: extremity earned through obsession (not mere competence), rarity among peers, decisiveness (name the weaknesses it overpowers), and reverberation (it must force decisions in product, pricing, and market). Caps the answer at two, records survivors in VOTERS.md — plus the near-miss 'special strengths' to deploy — and delivers the honest zero-voter verdict when nothing is extreme yet. Takes a self-portrait file (M-numbered), strengths or keystones charts, or a live capture. Load when the user asks what makes them special, what to bet the strategy on, their unfair advantage or superpower, or to 'find our voters.' Do NOT load to build the full self-portrait (the previous step) or to design the whole strategy — this file feeds it.
- ▌ Asb Who Me · asmartbearInterrogates the user to discover who they actually are — what drives them, what drains them, and the natural strengths they can't see because they come so easily — using proven self-discovery prompts (even-as-a-kid, lost-in-the-work, pit-of-my-stomach dread), the anti-questions, and outside-in questions given as homework to people who know them (perfect scenario, personal hell, invisible strengths). Presses every self-flattering label into concrete episodes, welcomes socially unacceptable motives (money, fame, proving a point), and records each finding in WHO-ME.md as a non-judgmental fact — a strength in some contexts, a hindrance in others — with the contexts where it helps and hurts. Load when the user asks who they really are, what work fits them, what drives or drains them, why they keep burning out, or what to build given who they are. Do NOT load to inventory a company's or product's strengths or to distill the one or two decisive personal advantages — the voters step, which consumes this file.
- ▌ Asb Problem · asmartbearScores whether a business idea can become a viable business, walking the path from 'The Problem' to 'Viable Business Model': one specific target market is Fermi-scored on seven multiplying criteria (Plausible, Self-Aware, Lucrative, Liquid, Eager ×2, Enduring), every optimistic number is challenged unless evidence backs it, and when the verdict is bad, narrower niches are re-scored side by side. Load when the user asks whether their startup or product idea is viable, whether a market really exists for what they want to build, why a product that solves a real problem isn't selling, which of several target markets to pursue, whether to persevere or give up on a product, or says 'score my idea.' Do NOT load for general devil's-advocate stress-testing of plans or pitches without the viability question, for building a full ideal-customer profile, for writing customer-interview questions, or for execution problems like funnel optimization, hiring, or fundraising.
- ▌ Asb Rude QA · asmartbearInterrogates a user's decision, plan, pitch, positioning, target market, pricing, or still-forming idea with sharp, unsparing questions — extended when useful to hostile or even unfair framings — until the plan sharpens into defensible decisions, or the user concludes it isn't a good idea after all. Acts as the constructive devil's advocate that the user cannot be for themselves. Load when the user wants to stress-test, attack, pressure-test, find holes in, or play devil's advocate against something they're attached to; when they ask to be "grilled," "beat up," or told "why I'm wrong"; when they suspect their plan contains wishful thinking, fluffy language, or an unnamed elephant in the room; or when they need to convert vague aspirations into real strategic decisions (with consequences accepted). Do NOT load for ordinary code review, prose editing, or general feedback requests without an adversarial frame.
- ▌ Create Asb Skill · asmartbear bundleInteractive, multi-phase workflow for authoring a new public asb-* skill from one of Jason Cohen's concepts. Invoke explicitly via /create-asb-skill — auto-invocation is disabled to avoid accidentally kicking off this long workflow.