personal-wip-limits
Cap your work-in-progress so things finish — the personal WIP limit (3 active outcomes, defended), the finish-before-start rule with its exceptions named, the parking lot for the overflow, and the throughput evidence that converts the skeptic. Use when asked I have twelve things half-done, why does nothing ever finish, set a WIP limit for my work, or I start everything and complete nothing. Produces the active-list cap, the parking protocol, the start-gate, and the two-week throughput experiment.
Profile →npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill personal-wip-limits --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.
# Personal WIP Limits Skill Twelve half-done things is not twelve things in progress — it's twelve contexts paying switch-tax ([context-switch-budget](../context-switch-budget/SKILL.md) arithmetic), twelve stale re-entries, and a finish rate near zero, because starting is cheap and finishing is expensive and unlimited WIP always buys the cheap thing. The limit — three active outcomes, hard — forces the trade unlimited-WIP hides: *starting the new means parking something*, said out loud. Everything else supports the cap: the parking lot (where the other nine wait, honorably), the start-gate (the new enters only when something finishes or gets consciously demoted), and the two-week experiment that converts the internal skeptic with their own throughput data. ## What This Skill Produces - **The active three** — chosen from the current pile ([task-triage-matrix](../task-triage-matrix/SKILL.md) verdicts feed this), each with its next action and finish line - **The parking lot** — the demoted work, parked with a one-line state note so re-entry is cheap when its turn comes - **The start-gate** — the rule at the door: finish, park-consciously, or decline ([saying-no-kindly](../saying-no-ki
- What This Skill Produces
- Required Inputs
- Framework: The Limit Rules
- Output Format
- The Active Three
- The Parking Lot
- The Lanes
- The Start-Gate + Experiment
- Quality Checks
- Anti-Patterns
What does the personal-wip-limits skill do?
Cap your work-in-progress so things finish — the personal WIP limit (3 active outcomes, defended), the finish-before-start rule with its exceptions named, the parking lot for the overflow, and the throughput evidence that converts the skeptic. Use when asked I have twelve things half-done, why does nothing ever finish, set a WIP limit for my work, or I start everything and complete nothing. Produces the active-list cap, the parking protocol, the start-gate, and the two-week throughput experiment.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill personal-wip-limits --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.