proto-persona
Create a proto-persona from current research, market signals, and team knowledge. Use when you need a working customer profile before deeper validation.
npx skills add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills --skill proto-persona --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.
## Purpose Create an initial, assumption-based persona profile that synthesizes available user research, market data, and stakeholder knowledge into a working hypothesis about your target user. Use this to align teams early in product development, guide initial design decisions, and identify gaps in understanding that require validation through research. This is not a validated persona—it's a "proto" (prototype) persona that evolves as you learn more. Think of it as a structured placeholder that prevents design-by-committee while acknowledging you don't have all the answers yet. ## Input **Works best with:** The target user or segment you need a working profile for. **Also useful:** Whatever signal exists — support themes, sales anecdotes, analytics, prior research — plus the decision the persona will guide. Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask. **Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The skill asks who you think the user is and what you already know, then structures it and flags the assumptions needing v
- Purpose
- Input
- Key Concepts
- What is a Proto-Persona?
- Proto vs. Validated Persona
- Why Use Proto-Personas?
- Anti-Patterns (What This Is NOT)
- When to Use This
- When NOT to Use This
- Application
- Step 1: Gather Available Context
- Step 2: Define the Persona's Identity
- Step 3: Capture Their Voice
- Step 4: Document Their Context
What does the proto-persona skill do?
Create a proto-persona from current research, market signals, and team knowledge. Use when you need a working customer profile before deeper validation.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills --skill proto-persona --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 deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills, a repository with 6,255 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.