What is the appetite-first approach in this skill?

It flips traditional estimation by deciding how much time a problem is worth (e.g., 2 weeks) and then shaping the solution to fit that budget, rather than asking how long a specific feature list will take.

Does cutting scope mean reducing code quality?

No. The core guideline of this skill is to cut breadth (the number of features) but never quality. It is better to ship one polished feature than five buggy ones.

What is the Circuit Breaker rule?

The Circuit Breaker rule states that if a project is not finished within its allocated cycle, it is cancelled by default. This prevents 'zombie projects' from dragging on indefinitely.

How does Scope Hammering help development?

Scope Hammering involves asking critical questions about whether a feature is truly a must-have, if it can ship without it, and if it only serves a small percentage of edge-case users.

Scope Cutting

Name: Scope Cutting
Author: assimovt

byassimovt

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Productivity & Workflow

Refines project scope using Shape Up's appetite-first approach to ensure fast, high-quality delivery within fixed time constraints.

This skill empowers Claude to ruthlessly prioritize and trim project requirements using the Shape Up methodology. Instead of estimating how long a task will take, it sets a fixed 'appetite' or time budget and shapes the solution to fit, emphasizing variable scope with a focus on quality over breadth. By applying techniques like 'scope hammering' and baseline comparisons, it helps teams identify non-essential features and edge cases, ensuring that only the most impactful version of a product is built and shipped within a specific cycle.

Key Features

01Circuit Breaker logic to prevent project bloat

02Scope Hammering to eliminate non-essential features

03Appetite-first time budgeting (Small vs. Big batch)

04Baseline comparison against no-feature states

05Quality-focused breadth reduction strategy

0628 GitHub stars

Use Cases

01Prioritizing development tasks when engineering resources are limited

02Trimming a bloated product specification to meet a strict deadline

03Identifying the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for a new application

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add assimovt/productskills scope-cutting

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill