# Skills from A Smart Bear

> Claude Code skills that implement frameworks and algorithms from A Smart Bear and the Hidden Multipliers book.

Each entry is a self-contained skill for Claude Code and other coding agents. Install them with the skills CLI or the Claude Code plugin marketplace (see How to install).

## When to use these skills
Reach for these skills when a founder or operator must make a hard business decision and needs their own thinking sharpened, not an answer handed to them. Each skill is a facilitator: it interrogates the user, presses on vague claims, and records the result in a working file. Best-fit jobs:

- Define the ideal customer (ICP): run the Find Your Carol workshop to turn an honest look at the company into a precise, targetable customer definition.
- Sharpen positioning and messaging: rewrite headlines, pitches, and homepage claims into value-first, specific language.
- Choose and defend a pricing strategy: pick one of More-for-More, More-for-Less, or Less-for-Less, or build the case to raise the price.
- Run a customer-interview program: plan goals and hypotheses, write unbiased questions, debrief each call, and synthesize what was learned.
- Discover founder strengths: find who the founder is and the one or two decisive advantages to bet the strategy on.
- Validate a business idea: score whether a market is real before building.

How an agent should call them: install a skill (see How to install), then invoke it and let it drive the conversation with the user. The skill asks the questions; do not answer on the user's behalf.

## Developer & agent resources
- [llms-full.txt](https://skills.asmartbear.com/llms-full.txt): the full text of every skill, inlined as Markdown, generated at build time.
- [GitHub repository](https://github.com/asmartbear/asb-skills): canonical source of every skill, installable directly with the skills CLI.
- [How to install](https://skills.asmartbear.com/install/): install commands for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and other agents.
- [Sitemap](https://skills.asmartbear.com/sitemap-index.xml): every page on the site.

## Full text
- [Full text of every skill](https://skills.asmartbear.com/llms-full.txt): all skill bodies inlined as Markdown, generated at build time so it stays current.
- [GitHub repository](https://github.com/asmartbear/asb-skills): canonical source of every skill.

## Workshops
- [Find Yourself](https://skills.asmartbear.com/workshops/find-yourself/): Two skills, run in sequence, that turn an honest look at who you are into the one or two decisive advantages you bet your whole strategy on.
- [Find Your Carol](https://skills.asmartbear.com/workshops/find-your-carol/): Six skills, run in sequence, that turn an honest look at who you are into a precise definition of your ideal customer — the one whose love transforms your marketing, sales, pricing, and product.
- [Customer Interviews](https://skills.asmartbear.com/workshops/customer-interviews/): Six skills, run in sequence, that turn customer conversations into decisions you can defend — what to build, who for, what to charge, and how to say it.
- [Set Your Price](https://skills.asmartbear.com/workshops/set-your-price/): Three skills, run in sequence, that build the value and desire behind your price and then charge for it — so customers value you more, love you more, and pay you more, for the right reasons.

## Skills
- [Rude Q&A: The Constructive Devil's Advocate](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-rude-qa/): Stress-test any decision, plan, pitch, or positioning against sharp questions until you can defend it or admit it isn't ready.
- [Excuse me, is there a problem? Score your idea's path to a viable business](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-problem/): Find out whether your idea can become a real business — a seven-factor Fermi scorecard that multiplies out to a viability verdict before you build.
- [Observations: The raw, unjudged facts about who you actually are](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-carol-observations/): Surface the raw material your ideal-customer definition is built from — what customers praise, complain about, and leave over — through twelve unsparing question categories, recorded vividly and judged later. For a company already operating online, it first scans public reviews and press to seed the walk.
- [Strengths & Weaknesses: Distill the facts into the attributes that matter](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-carol-strengths/): Convert your raw company observations into the few deep-truth attributes that matter — each tested for genericness and classified as strength, weakness, or deliberately both.
- [Keystones: Who needs an extreme version of what you're best at](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-carol-keystones/): Refine each strength into keystones — the characteristics that make certain customers need an extreme version of it — and name the real market segments that embody each.
- [Deal-Breakers: Who will never buy, no matter how much they like you](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-carol-dealbreakers/): Refine each weakness into deal-breakers — the disqualifiers that define your anti-market — then use them to hone every keystone segment into a sharper target.
- [Inciting Events: What makes Carol buy today instead of someday](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-carol-inciting-events/): Map the trigger moments that move a perfect-fit customer from "call back in nine months" to "buying today" — one per keystone, vivid enough to advertise against.
- [Define Carol: The ideal customer your whole company can aim at](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-carol-define/): Synthesize strengths, keystones, deal-breakers, and inciting events into a crisp, behavioral definition of your ideal customer — one Marketing can target, Sales can qualify, and Product can build to thrill.
- [Who, me? Find out who you actually are](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-who-me/): You can't read the label from inside the jar — this interrogation surfaces what drives you, what drains you, and the strengths you can't see, recorded as facts you can build a strategy on.
- [Voters: The one or two things that win you the whole game](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-voters/): Stop being pretty good at five things — find the one or two traits so extreme and so yours that customers accept every other trade-off, and bet the strategy on them.
- [Positioning: Reword your marketing until it's worth more](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-positioning/): Convert save-money pitches and vague claims into value-first, vivid positioning — specific, cliché-free, Opposite-Test-passing statements you can reuse in every ad, page, and pitch.
- [The Needs Stack: What your customer actually wants](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-needs-stack/): Climb inside your customer's head — map the ladder of needs your product serves, level by level, revealing your real alternatives, the outcome you may honestly promise, and your higher purpose.
- [Goal Questions: What you want to know, but cannot ask directly](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-interview-goals/): Turn "we should talk to customers" into a numbered list of goal questions — the unaskable questions (price, positioning, what to build) your interviews will be designed to answer.
- [Hypotheses: Your best guesses, written down to facilitate learning](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-interview-hypotheses/): Convert your untested beliefs about customers, pain, and price into numbered, falsifiable hypotheses — the raw material your customer interviews are designed to test.
- [Interview Questions: Test your hypotheses without leading the witness](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-interview-questions/): Turn each hypothesis into an open-ended, unbiased interview question — a miniature experiment that uncovers what customers actually think, not what you hope to hear.
- [Interview Debrief: One conversation, distilled into evidence](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-interview-debrief/): Turn raw notes or a transcript from one customer interview into a brief on-the-record report — concise answers mapped to your questions, plus the surprises that fit nowhere.
- [More or Less: Pick One Pricing Strategy and Align to It](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-more-or-less/): Commit to one of the three self-consistent pricing strategies — More for More, More for Less, or Less for Less — then align your whole company behind it.
- [Learning: Let the interviews rewrite your hypotheses](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-interview-learning/): Synthesize everything your customer interviews have said into concrete updates — hypotheses confirmed, overturned, refined, or newly born — proposed one at a time, with you deciding each.
- [Willingness to Pay: Own the Right Desire](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-willingness-to-pay/): Map the desire behind why customers pay — Love, Utility, or Coercion — and commit to the one or two kinds worth owning, without ever touching the price number.
- [Interview Report: What you know, what you think, and what to do with it](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-interview-report/): Turn a finished round of customer interviews into one findings report — validated truths, working theories, and open questions — ready to drive positioning, ideal-customer, pricing, and product decisions.
- [Justify Raising Prices: Make It Worth It](https://skills.asmartbear.com/skills/asb-raise-prices/): Build the case for charging more — which market your price has selected, what profit is at stake, and the moves that would justify a higher price — then lock in a short, tested shortlist.

## Optional
- [How to install](https://skills.asmartbear.com/install/): install commands for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and other agents.