tkwong

Validate Before Build — Productivity skill for Claude Code

Productivity community

Before committing time to build a non-trivial thing, spend 30 minutes checking it doesn't already exist.

How to install Validate Before Build

Installs to ~/.claude/skills/tkwong-claude-ops-validate-before-build/SKILL.md

Terminal

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/tkwong-claude-ops-validate-before-build && curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tkwong/claude-ops/HEAD/skills/validate-before-build.md -o ~/.claude/skills/tkwong-claude-ops-validate-before-build/SKILL.md

Restart Claude Code, or start a new session, for it to be picked up.

What Validate Before Build does

name: validate-before-build description: Before committing time to build a non-trivial thing, spend 30 minutes checking it doesn't already exist. Reinventing wheels is the most expensive failure mode.

validate-before-build

You're about to spend 1+ hours building something. Before you do, spend 30 minutes confirming you're not reinventing a wheel.

The mindset

The cost of building the wrong thing is the time to build it PLUS the time to maintain it PLUS the opportunity cost of not

Alternatives in Productivity

Trio — Force a trio review of the task that follows — pm, designer, and engineer weigh in in parallel before any acti 324 ★
Orchestrated Task Execution — You MUST follow the orchestrator workflow before executing this task 120 ★
Human First Agent Writing — Human-first multi-agent writing workflow for research, drafting, editing, and fact-checking 63 ★