Product fluency for AI. 1 skill, 16 commands, and curated anti-patterns for sharp product thinking.
Impeccable taught AI to generate sophisticated frontend design. Acumen does the same for product management.
Every LLM learned from the same generic templates. Without guidance, you get the same predictable product slop: vague value props, demographic personas, vanity metrics, feature checklists with no thesis, and specs that could belong to any company.
Acumen fights that bias with:
- A core skill with 7 domain-specific reference documents (view source)
- 16 commands organized in 5 layers — from context gathering to shipping changelogs
- 12 named anti-patterns ("AI Product Slop") that explicitly tell the AI what NOT to produce
A comprehensive product skill with 7 deep-dive references (view skill):
| Reference | Covers |
|---|---|
| Problem Discovery | JTBD, Five Whys, Switch Framework, interview anti-patterns |
| User Segmentation | Behavioral cohorts, personas, anti-personas, journey mapping |
| Prioritization & Strategy | ICE/RICE limitations, sequencing logic, regret minimization |
| Metrics & Measurement | Metric trees, counter-metrics, leading indicators, north stars |
| Specification Craft | Working backward, acceptance criteria, edge case categories |
| Stakeholder Alignment | DACI, disagree-and-commit, managing upward, pre-mortems |
| Competitive Intelligence | Moat analysis, win/loss, competitive response playbooks |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/teach-acumen |
One-time setup that gathers product context and saves it to .acumen.md |
/scout |
Build and maintain a living competitor map. Supports quick scans and deep analysis |
/persona |
Build and maintain behavioral personas grounded in real user patterns |
/features |
Build and maintain a lightweight feature inventory |
/value |
Map per-persona value delivery to the usage and north star metrics that prove it |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/orientation |
Audit product identity — what we do, for whom, whether the feature surface is coherent with the thesis |
/defensibility |
Audit what's hard to copy — moats, switching costs, data advantages, network effects, and AI-era resilience |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/diagnose |
Find current problems based on data, value delivery for main personas, and current features. Suggests /workshop |
/measure |
Check KPI health — what's working, what's not, where to dig deeper. Suggests /workshop |
/workshop |
Ideation workshop to explore opportunities — value chain analysis, competitive gaps, user feedback synthesis |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/roadmap |
Plan a sequence of bets, break into shippable increments, prioritize |
/increment |
Scope a product increment end-to-end — context, spec, implementation, wireframes, and engineering considerations. Leads to /critique-product |
/critique-product |
Evaluate and validate a PM artifact — score for rigor, test riskiest assumptions, and decide if it's ready to ship |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/narrate |
Write product communication for a specific audience, including when stakes are high and stakeholders disagree |
/changelog |
Write a changelog from recent PRs and commits, grounded in feature context |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/update-acumen |
Fetch the latest Acumen skills from GitHub and update local copies |
/cheatsheet |
Print a quick-reference cheatsheet of all Acumen skills, organized by layer |
/diagnose - Find the real problem
/diagnose why churn spiked in Q1
/diagnose onboarding drop-off
/orientation - Audit product identity
/orientation
/orientation after the pivot
/workshop - Ideate on opportunities
/workshop integration onboarding
/workshop expanding into enterprise
/increment - Scope a shippable increment
/increment self-serve team onboarding
/increment real-time collaboration on dashboards
/changelog - Write a changelog
/changelog last 7 days
/changelog since v2.1
/critique-product - Score and validate an artifact
/critique-product the PRD I just wrote
/critique-product our Q3 roadmap
The skill includes 12 explicit tells of AI product slop:
- Template Filler - Every section filled, none grounded in what's actually built
- Demographic Persona - Demographics because real behavior is observed, not assumed
- Inverted Solution - Problem is the solution described negatively — the real friction was never observed
- Vanity Metric - Measures things that always go up, not what the product actually tracks
- Feature Checklist - Flat list with no awareness of what already exists or how it connects
- Generic Risk - "Technical complexity" — because the actual system was never examined
- Tautology Story - User story restates the feature because the real job-to-be-done is unknown
- Phantom Feature - Proposes what already exists — the codebase was never read
- Strategy of Everything - Lists every direction because without context, nothing can be ruled out
- Feature Roadmap - Timeline of features with no thesis about what the product is becoming
- Greenfield Spec - Scopes from scratch, ignoring existing architecture and shipped features
- Consensus Document - Inoffensive to all because without product evidence, there's nothing to argue from
source/ # Source of truth
skills/
product-thinking/ # Core skill (not user-invocable)
SKILL.md
reference/ # 7 domain-specific reference docs
teach-acumen/SKILL.md # Context: setup
scout/SKILL.md # Context: competitors (+ deep analysis)
profile/SKILL.md # Context: personas
features/SKILL.md # Context: features
value/SKILL.md # Context: per-persona value & metrics
update-acumen/SKILL.md # Meta: sync skills from GitHub
orientation/SKILL.md # Audit: product identity
defensibility/SKILL.md # Audit: moats
diagnose/SKILL.md # Ideate: find problems
measure/SKILL.md # Ideate: KPI health check
workshop/SKILL.md # Ideate: opportunity exploration
roadmap/SKILL.md # Craft: sequence bets
increment/SKILL.md # Craft: scope increment
critique-product/ # Craft: evaluate & validate
SKILL.md
reference/ # Scoring rubric + reviewer personas
narrate/SKILL.md # Communicate: write for audience
changelog/SKILL.md # Communicate: write changelog
.agents/skills/ # Agent Skills spec (generic)
.claude/skills/ # Claude Code (symlinks to .agents/)
| File | Maintained by | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
.acumen.md |
/teach-acumen |
Product context |
.acumen/competitors.md |
/scout |
Living competitor map |
.acumen/personas.md |
/persona |
Behavioral personas |
.acumen/features.md |
/features |
Feature inventory |
.acumen/value.md |
/value |
Per-persona value map with proof metrics |
.acumen/value-chain.md |
/teach-acumen, /profile, /workshop |
Value chain map per persona |
.acumen/sources.md |
/teach-acumen |
Data source configuration |
.acumen/reports/ |
/diagnose, /measure, /workshop |
Point-in-time analysis reports |
# Project-specific
cp -r .claude your-project/
cp -r .agents your-project/
# Or global
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r .agents/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/Copy the .agents/skills/ directory into your tool's skill location. Skills follow the Agent Skills spec.
Once installed, start with setup:
/teach-acumen # One-time: gather product context
/scout # Build competitor map
/persona # Build personas
/features # Inventory features
Then audit to understand where you are:
/orientation # Is the product coherent?
/defensibility # What's hard to copy?
Then ideate and build:
/diagnose # Find the real problem
/measure # Check KPI health
/workshop # Explore opportunities
/roadmap # Sequence the work
/increment # Scope an increment
/critique-product # Score and validate before shipping
And communicate:
/narrate # Write for any audience
/changelog # Write a changelog
- Mindset injection > workflow templates - Skills set a thinking posture, not process steps
- Opinion > comprehensiveness - "RICE doesn't ship products, judgment does"
- Brevity > coverage - 50-100 lines per skill, depth in reference docs
- Context layer feeds everything - Not passive storage, active inputs
- Vocabulary calibration - Replace AI slop with product-fluent language
- Natural flow - Skills suggest the next skill: diagnose -> workshop -> increment -> critique
Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.
Inspired by Impeccable by Paul Bakaus.