used-car-decoder
Decode a used-car listing before you drive an hour to see it — what the seller's phrasing is hiding, the history-check items that matter, a test-drive and inspection checklist ordered by cost-of-miss, the questions that make evasive sellers visible, and the walk-away signs ranked 🔴🟡🟢. Use when someone says 'is this car listing legit', 'what should I check on a used car', 'decode this ad', or is about to buy their first car. Produces a listing decode, the viewing checklist, and the negotiation frame. Not a mechanic — and it says which checks need one.
npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill used-car-decoder --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.
# Used Car Decoder Skill A used-car listing is a document written by someone who knows the car's problems, for someone who doesn't. The dialect is learnable: "selling for a friend" (distance from liability), "drives well for its age" (adjusted expectations), "minor cosmetic damage" (photographed from the good side), "no test drives without deposit" (walk away now). This skill decodes the ad the way [[lease-decoder]] reads a lease — severity-ranked, money math attached — then arms the viewing: the checks a non-mechanic can actually do, the questions that surface evasion, and the honest boundary: which findings mean *pay a professional for an inspection* and which mean leave. ## What This Skill Produces - A **listing decode**: phrase-by-phrase, 🔴🟡🟢, with what each hedge typically means and the question that tests it - The **before-you-travel checks**: history/title verification items (accident/write-off status, finance owing, mileage consistency, recalls) — each flagged as country-specific-verify-locally with what to search, since registries differ everywhere - A **viewing & test-drive checklist** ordered by cost-of-miss: the cold-start, the panel-gap walk, fluids, tires including
- What This Skill Produces
- Required Inputs
- Framework
- Output Format
- Quality Checks
- Anti-Patterns
- Related
What does the used-car-decoder skill do?
Decode a used-car listing before you drive an hour to see it — what the seller's phrasing is hiding, the history-check items that matter, a test-drive and inspection checklist ordered by cost-of-miss, the questions that make evasive sellers visible, and the walk-away signs ranked 🔴🟡🟢. Use when someone says 'is this car listing legit', 'what should I check on a used car', 'decode this ad', or is about to buy their first car. Produces a listing decode, the viewing checklist, and the negotiation frame. Not a mechanic — and it says which checks need one.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill used-car-decoder --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.