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Aakash Gupta: the most expensive PM artifact is a 30-page PRD for a feature that…

2026-05-12 · 15:56 UTC ·@aakashgupta ·2 min read

Brief

Aakash Gupta (tweeted 2026-05-12) argues that bloated PM artifacts—exemplified by a 30-page PRD that never ships—result from missing upfront checks in generator skills. His solution: simple three-line gates at the top of Claude skills, paired with a table that anticipates rationalizations. He validated this in 75 tests over 25 skills and publishes 10 laws plus two actionable skills (/improve-skill, /create-skill).

Why it matters

Aakash Gupta: the most expensive PM artifact is a 30-page PRD for a feature that would never ship; his recommended fix is three validation lines at the top of a Claude skill—"Problem statement clear? Target user identified? Evidence the user wants this?"—and if two of three are missing, the skill refuses and names what's missing.

Key details

  • In 75 tests across 25 Claude skills (15 daily PM skills + 10 edge-case skills) Gupta found two failure modes: Claude routes on only a skill's name+description (37 characters is often insufficient), and it takes the shortest path, skipping later self-review steps; a table mapping "What Claude might think | Why it's wrong" and top-of-skill gates reduce these failures.
  • Gupta published 10 laws and two installable skills: /improve-skill (generates test prompts, diagnoses where outputs break, rewrites the highest-leverage problem) and /create-skill (scaffolds new skills with the 10 laws); he says PMs who stopped pasting an 800-word prompt began pulling ahead six months ago.
Source evidence

The most expensive PM artifact is a 30-page PRD for a feature that was never going to ship.

Hours of writing. Specs, edge cases, success metrics, rollout plan. You hand it to engineering. Engineering points out the thing you knew at hour zero: the user doesn't want this. The launch was never going to clear strategy review.

Most PM Claude skills repeat that pattern at machine speed. /prd-draft writes the document. The skill doesn't ask whether the doc should exist.

The fix is three lines at the top of the skill. Problem statement clear? Target user identified? Evidence the user wants this? If two of three are missing, the skill stops, names what's missing, and refuses to write.

Three lines turn a doc-generator into a gate. The 700 lines after that matter less than the three at the top.

Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta)

Most PMs are still pasting the same 800-word prompt at the top of every Claude session.

The PMs pulling ahead stopped doing that 6 months ago.

Prompts are text you have to remember to paste. Skills are reusable behavior Claude auto-loads the moment your message matches what the skill does. You install once, you stop copy-pasting, and your teammate runs the exact same version you do.

I ran 75 tests across 25 skills last week. 15 PM skills I use daily plus 10 built specifically to surface edge cases. The bad ones failed in patterns that repeated across categories.

Most people think Claude reads their full skill file every time. It doesn't. Claude scans only the name and description of every installed skill, then decides whether to load the rest. A description that reads "Suggest recipes from what's in fridge" stays invisible forever. 37 characters of surface isn't enough for Claude to route on.

The second pattern: Claude takes the shortest path to a response. A self-review pass at step 6 of 7 gets skipped 4 out of 5 runs. Adding "run the self-review pass" again doesn't fix it. Claude already read that instruction and routed around it.

What works: a table that names the rationalization before Claude generates it. "What Claude might think | Why it's wrong." Three rows is usually enough.

The full piece has 10 laws and two skills you can install today:

  • /improve-skill, which generates test prompts against your existing skills, diagnoses where the output breaks down, and rewrites the highest-leverage problem

  • /create-skill, which scaffolds new skills with all 10 laws baked in from the start

Full deep dive for paid subscribers: news.aakashg.com/p/10-laws-c…

— https://nitter.net/aakashgupta/status/2053982150958145934#m