machiavelli-counsel
Analyse a workplace power situation the way Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) would — who holds power, whose support you need, what fortune can take from you — then give both the Machiavellian read and the honest modern counterweight. Use when navigating a reorg, a new leader arriving, stakeholder politics, a territory dispute, or 'my project is caught in politics'. Produces a power map, a Machiavellian assessment, and an ethical playing-it-straight plan.
Profile →npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill machiavelli-counsel --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.
# Machiavelli Counsel Skill Five hundred years before "stakeholder management," Machiavelli wrote the unsentimental manual on power: how it is gained, kept, and lost. This skill applies The Prince's actual analytical questions to a modern workplace situation — then, because flattery of the reader's cynicism is its own trap, pairs every Machiavellian read with the honest modern move. You get the clear-eyed analysis without the 16th-century ethics. ## What This Skill Produces - A **power map** of the situation: who decides, who influences the decider, whose support is load-bearing, who loses if you win - A **Machiavellian assessment** — what The Prince's framework actually says about your position (not generic "office politics tips") - A **counterweight plan**: the ethical version of each move, and where the Machiavellian and honest paths genuinely diverge - A one-line **fortuna check**: what part of your position depends on luck holding ## Required Inputs Ask for (if not already provided): - The situation, in the user's words (reorg, new boss, rival team, stalled project…) - Who the key people are and what each controls (budget, headcount, the CEO's ear) - What the user wants to hap
- What This Skill Produces
- Required Inputs
- Framework: the questions The Prince actually asks
- Output Format
- Quality Checks
- Anti-Patterns
What does the machiavelli-counsel skill do?
Analyse a workplace power situation the way Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) would — who holds power, whose support you need, what fortune can take from you — then give both the Machiavellian read and the honest modern counterweight. Use when navigating a reorg, a new leader arriving, stakeholder politics, a territory dispute, or 'my project is caught in politics'. Produces a power map, a Machiavellian assessment, and an ethical playing-it-straight plan.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill machiavelli-counsel --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 mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills, a repository with 1,255 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.