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shark-board

Your board of directors, built to disagree with you. Puts a business idea in front of a four-member board, each a sub-agent reading the idea through one published framework: the Offers lens (from Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers), the Monopoly lens (from Peter Thiel's Zero to One), the Product lens (from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs) and the Evidence lens (from Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test), which scores only what real people have done. Each member scores the idea, names what would kill it and the cheapest test that would prove it, and votes fund, fund with conditions, or pass. Use when the user says "test my business idea", "would this work", "pressure-test this", "what would a board say", "is this a good business", or starts the Shark Tank Proof pack on a new idea.

What is shark-board?

shark-board is a Claude Code agent skill that your board of directors, built to disagree with you. Puts a business idea in front of a four-member board, each a sub-agent reading the idea through one published framework: the Offers lens (from Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers), the Monopoly lens (from Peter Thiel's Zero to One), the Product lens (from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs) and the Evidence lens (from Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test), which scores only what real people have done. Each member scores the idea, names what would kill it and the cheapest test that would prove it, and votes fund, fund with conditions, or pass. Use when the user says "test my business idea", "would this work", "pressure-test this", "what would a board say", "is this a good business", or starts the Shark Tank Proof pack on a new idea.

Works with✓Claude Code~Codex CLI~Cursor
npx skills add https://github.com/peaknr35/shark-Tank-proof/tree/main/skills/shark-board

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Documentation

What does shark-board do?

The first meeting. Before anyone builds a website or signs a lease, four board members tear the idea apart, each from a different angle, and vote. The board is there to find what kills the idea, not to cheer for it.

Read ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../receipts/rules.md first.

What the user typed after /shark-board: $ARGUMENTS. If that is blank, take the idea from the conversation.

The rule about the four names

The lenses are summaries of published frameworks, nothing more. The board members are not those people, never speak as them, never quote them, never claim they would endorse anything. Write "the Offers lens", never "Alex Hormozi says". If the user asks what one of them really thinks, say you can only apply their public frameworks.

Step 0: the idea file

Everything in the Shark Tank Proof pack reads founder/idea.md in the user's project. If it does not exist, write it now from the conversation:

# <business name, or a working name>

- What it is: one sentence.
- Who it is for: the target customer, as specific as the user can make it.
- What it sells, at what price: the core product and its price.
- Where and how: city or online, how customers find it, how it is delivered.
- Budget and constraints: money, time, skills, anything already decided.

If the name, the customer, the product or the price is missing, ask for those (at most three questions in one message), then write the file. Do not invent a budget, a market size or a competitor.

Step 1: brief the board

Write founder/board/brief.md: the idea file plus anything else the user said that a stranger would need. Sub-agents cannot see this conversation, so the brief must stand on its own. Do not add your own opinion of the idea to it.

Step 2: convene

Launch four sub-agents in ONE message (Agent tool, subagent_type: general-purpose, one per member), each told: Read founder/board/brief.md and shark-board's lenses.md (path below), apply ONLY the <lens> lens, and write your memo to founder/board/<lens>.md. Your job is to find what would kill this business. Do not be agreeable: most new businesses fail, and a polite FUND is worse than a clear PASS. The founder's excitement is not evidence. The Evidence member also reads founder/evidence/claims.md if it exists. The lens file is lenses.md in this skill's folder (${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/lenses.md; if that path is not expanded, use the base directory Claude Code printed for this skill).

Each memo, in this shape:

# <Lens> lens
Score: <1-10> | Vote: FUND / FUND IF / PASS
## What is strong
## What would kill it (the top 3, most dangerous first)
## The cheapest real test for each (what, with whom, by when, what result kills it)
## What is real so far, and what is only believed
## The questions I would ask the founder
## If FUND IF: the conditions (each one a real-world test, not "do more research")

Step 3: the chair's summary

Read the four memos (they are short) and write founder/board.md:

  1. The hard truth: the single most likely reason this business dies, in one or two plain sentences. This comes first, before the vote.
  2. The vote, e.g. "2 fund if, 2 pass", and the average score.
  3. The risks more than one member raised: these go first.
  4. Every condition, merged, as a checklist. Mark which ones only real buyers can tick off (most of them), and which the CFO or the competitor scout can. The simulated panel can raise doubts about a condition; it can never tick one off.
  5. The kill list: the three tests to run first in the real world, with the result that would mean stop.
  6. One paragraph: the strongest version of this business the board can see. It may differ from what the user pitched; say so plainly.

Then log the vote in the ledger as SIMULATED (it is model opinion):

python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../receipts/ledger.py" add --kind other --status SIMULATED --use PRIVATE --by shark-board --claim "Board vote: <vote>, average <score>/10"

Keep the members' disagreements. A board that agrees on everything was not doing its job.

Rules

  • Score the business, not the founder.
  • No made-up facts. If a lens needs a number nobody has yet (market size, cost of acquiring a customer), name it as an open question and say which skill answers it (/ground-truth, /truth-serum, /burn-test).
  • A PASS is a result, not a failure. Say it plainly.
  • If the founder argues with a vote, the board changes it only for new evidence, and the chair names that evidence. Arguing harder is not evidence.
  • No member treats the panel, another memo or the founder's belief as proof.

Output

founder/idea.md, founder/board/ (brief and three memos), founder/board.md. Then say the hard truth and the vote, one line each, and suggest the next step: the first kill-list test with real people (/receipts has the call guide), /ground-truth to see who is already there, or /truth-serum to find objections with simulated buyers before the real calls.

Where the pack goes next

evidence -> board -> competitors -> consumer -> pricing -> offer -> cfo -> marketing -> brand -> ops -> launch -> plan -> pitch -> funding

/receipts also runs any time a real person does something: a call, a deposit, a pilot, a no.

Every skill can also run on its own; each reads whatever is already in founder/.

Individual skills in this repo

This repo contains 5 individual skills — each has its own dedicated page.

burn-test

Your CFO. Builds the unit economics of a business before money is spent: what one unit earns after its direct costs, the real profit margin at the planned volume, the break-even point in units a day, year 1 month by month, the cash needed before it pays for itself, how long the startup spend takes to earn back, and what happens if the price drops, sales come in low or costs rise. Every number traces to an input the user can check. Use when the user says "find the profit margins", "do the numbers", "is this profitable", "break-even", "unit economics", "how much do I need to start", or "run the CFO".

dealbreaker

Builds an offer too good to refuse. Lists every problem the buyer hits on the way to the result they want, turns each into a solution, trims to what is cheap to deliver and valuable to the buyer, and stacks it with honest bonuses, a guarantee the CFO can afford, real urgency and a clear name. Scores it on the value equation (outcome, likelihood, time, effort) and re-tests it on a quick buyer panel. Use when the user says "make my offer better", "why won't people buy", "what should I include", "guarantee", "bonuses", "grand slam offer", or after the panel shows people passing.

handshake

Turns the founder folder into the thing that gets one real person to say yes to the next step: a one-page pilot offer for a customer, an NSF Project Pitch or grant answer for a funder, an investor or lender one-pager, a business case for a boss, or an invite for the people who will use it. Always writes the one-sentence, three-sentence and three-minute versions first. Builds only from claims in the evidence ledger that the audience may see, never from simulated buyers, and checks the finished pitch with the ledger before it goes out. Use when the user says "pitch this", "write a pilot offer", "one-pager", "grant pitch", "NSF pitch", "deck for", "email this customer", "business case", or "what do I send them".

kill-or-build

Your business planner. Compiles everything the other Shark Tank Proof skills wrote (the board's verdict, the competitors, the buyer panel, pricing, the offer, the CFO's numbers, marketing, brand, operations, the launch plan and the evidence ledger) into one business plan with a verdict at the top that is computed, never written by hand: Profitable (the numbers pass and a real buyer has paid, signed or booked), Unproven (works on paper, no real buyer yet), Not yet (with the failing numbers) or Incomplete. A simulated panel can fail a plan but never pass one. Adds an executive summary and a one-page version. Use when the user says "write my business plan", "put it all together", "is it profitable", "give me the plan", or at the end of the Shark Tank Proof pack.

truth-serum

The consumer panel. Spins up a swarm of buyer sub-agents (default 100, --quick for 20) trained on the user's target customer, each with a different income, age, buying behaviour and objection, shows every one the same pitch, and runs the business through 100 buyer scenarios to see who buys, who doesn't, and why. Tallies the answers into buy rates by segment, the reasons people pass in their own words, what would flip a no, and price answers for litmus. Every result is labelled SIMULATED: it finds objections and the questions to ask real buyers, and never counts as demand. Use when the user says "would people buy this", "test it on customers", "run the consumer panel", "simulate buyers", "who is my customer", or "validate demand".

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