ideate
Take a fuzzy idea (or an existing thing you want to improve) through a disciplined funnel — explore → pressure-test → converge — and produce one living CONCEPT_BRIEF.md: a locked concept + phased roadmap. Acts as a blunt, honest co-founder (permission to overrule you), forces a success metric and a kill criterion before any roadmap, and hands off cleanly to the prompt-pack skill for building. ALWAYS invoke when the user says any of "help me figure out what to build", "I have an idea for…", "is this idea any good", "pressure-test this idea", "should I build / should I rebuild X", "evaluate whet
npx skills add nelsonwerd/idea-to-ship-skills --skill ideate --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Ideate — fuzzy idea → locked concept + roadmap `ideate` is the **upstream partner to the `prompt-pack` skill**. It takes an idea that's still fuzzy — or an existing project you want to evaluate and improve — and runs it through a disciplined funnel that ends in one durable artifact: a **`CONCEPT_BRIEF.md`** holding the locked concept, the honest verdict, and a phased roadmap. That brief is exactly what `prompt-pack` consumes to produce build prompts. The whole pipeline: > **ideate → `CONCEPT_BRIEF.md` → prompt-pack → execute** This skill encodes a method reverse-engineered from real, successful idea→ship journeys — *including the mistakes those journeys made*, so it improves on them rather than repeating them. ## Why this exists (the problem it solves) Left unstructured, ideation with an AI fails in predictable ways: - **It specs too early.** A full data model and endpoints get written before anyone asks "is this even a good idea?" — so effort pours into an unvalidated concept. - **It forgets.** The AI re-derives the same "is this a business?" assessment every session; the user re-pastes context; decisions never settle. (This is the single biggest failure.) - **It has no finish l
- Why this exists (the problem it solves)
- The prime directive (the ordering rule)
- When to use this
- This is an interactive loop, not a one-shot
- The two modes
- The funnel (run in order)
- The honest-advisor contract (the voice)
- Forcing functions (the skill must make these happen)
- The output: one living CONCEPTBRIEF
- Pitfalls to avoid (each maps to a real failure mode)
- Scale heuristics
What does the ideate skill do?
Take a fuzzy idea (or an existing thing you want to improve) through a disciplined funnel — explore → pressure-test → converge — and produce one living CONCEPT_BRIEF.md: a locked concept + phased roadmap. Acts as a blunt, honest co-founder (permission to overrule you), forces a success metric and a kill criterion before any roadmap, and hands off cleanly to the prompt-pack skill for building. ALWAYS invoke when the user says any of "help me figure out what to build", "I have an idea for…", "is this idea any good", "pressure-test this idea", "should I build / should I rebuild X", "evaluate whet
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add nelsonwerd/idea-to-ship-skills --skill ideate --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From nelsonwerd/idea-to-ship-skills, a repository with 78 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.