Thinking Pre Mortem
Before committing to a plan or launch, assume it already failed and reason backward...
Install
npx skills add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-pre-mortem -g -a claude-code -y- Repository
- tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills1.7k
- Category
- Engineering
- Updated
- 3mo ago
- License
- MIT
- Context cost
- Lightabout 863 tokens
- Runs scripts
- No, instructions only
What it does
Before committing to a plan or launch, assume it already failed and reason backward through concrete causes, convert failure paths into mitigations, gates, and stop checks.
Pre-Mortem Analysis
Core rule: Prospective hindsight beats "what could go wrong?" Assume the plan has already failed (past tense), generate concrete failure paths, reverse them into prevention requirements, and bind each top path to a verifiable plan change.
When to Use
- Before kickoff, major technical commitment, high-risk sprint work, launch, or release.
- After a plan looks solid but before execution, especially when optimism or overconfidence is likely.
- When a decision is costly to reverse and risks are still implicit rather than enforced.
When NOT to Use
- Work is small, local, and cheaply reversible, skip the ceremony.
- You are mid-incident under time pressure, act now (OODA / scientific method); pre-mortem is pre-execution.
- You would only emit generic risks ("scope creep", "requirements unclear") that do not bind to this plan.
- Risks are already enforced by live gates (CI, canary, rollback, alerts) with no residual unlisted path.
- A mature risk register already covers the same specific failure paths with owners and checks.
