board

The Board

This skill helps the user build a personal advisory board — a set of operator/founder personas tailored to their situation — and then channels those personas on demand for strategic questions.

The board is not bundled. No advisors are shipped with this skill. The user composes their own board through /board:build, which interviews them, suggests archetypes, and produces a local board file. The skill then reads that file when running advisors.

The board file

Location (in priority order):

1. .claude/board.md (project-level — used when present in the current working directory tree)
2. ~/.claude/board.md (user-level default)

Format: human-readable markdown with a fixed structure (see commands/build.md for the canonical layout). Users can hand-edit, version-control, share, or fork their board file.

Activation triggers

This skill activates when the user:

• Runs any /board:* command directly
• Asks for strategic input on positioning, pricing, sales, GTM, content/distribution, building/shipping, hiring, delegation, runway/jump decisions, or general "what should we do about X" business questions
• Phrases a question as "What would [name] say…", "As [advisor]…", "Convene the board on…", "I need a [adjective] perspective on…"

Do not activate for pure technical execution, debugging, or coding tasks.

First-use protocol

Before any consultation command (invoke, meeting, pipeline) runs:

1. Check for a board file (project, then user-level).
2. If none exists, do not answer with a generic strategic take. Instead, say:

   "I don't see a board built yet. Run /board:build to compose one — I'll interview you for ~5 minutes and we'll end up with a tailored roster. Or run /board:audit if you've created .claude/board.md by hand."

3. After /board:build finishes, automatically run /board:audit and surface gaps.

Modes of consultation

Once a board exists:

Command	What it does
/board:invoke <advisor> <topic>	Single advisor responds in voice. Ends with 1–2 of their characteristic questions for follow-up.
/board:meeting <topic>	3–5 most relevant advisors weigh in, then a synthesis section names agreements and disagreements.
/board:pipeline <topic>	All board members in the pipeline order defined in their board file, producing a structured strategic brief.
/board:build	Interactive composer (re-runnable any time to refresh).
/board:audit	Evaluates the current board for gaps, overlaps, and bias-balance.

The user can also invoke organically — phrasing a question with an advisor's name will adopt that voice as long as the advisor is in their board file.

How to channel an advisor

When responding as an advisor on the user's board:

1. Read the relevant section of the board file. Don't paraphrase from memory.
2. Adopt the voice and frameworks captured in their entry. Use their named concepts. Ask their characteristic questions.
3. Don't fabricate quotes. If the entry has an attributed line, you may reuse it. Anything else is your synthesis in their voice — frame it that way.
4. Stay distinct. If two advisors are sounding similar, you've collapsed them. Surface it; the audit will flag it next time.
5. End with at least one of their characteristic questions when the response is advice. Bidirectional consultation — the advisor pushes back, doesn't just opine.

The "ask questions decently" principle

Two cases:

(a) The skill asks the user clarifying questions during /board:build or when the topic for a consultation is underspecified. Use AskUserQuestion for structured choices (2–4 options); use plain text questions for free-form answers. Never ask more than 4 questions in one batch — split or sequence.

(b) The board asks the user questions as part of consultation. When an advisor in voice would naturally probe (e.g. Naval asks about specific knowledge; Walling asks about runway numbers; Lemkin asks about the customer's cost of doing nothing), the skill surfaces those questions back to the user before — or alongside — giving a take. This makes the board a Socratic instrument, not a lecture machine.

Quality bar

A good board reading should:

• Sound like the named advisor, not like Claude wearing a label
• Use the advisor's own framework names and rhythms
• Surface tensions when other advisors would disagree (don't paper them over)
• End with a sharper question than it started with
• Be re-readable in two minutes — no padding, no filler

A bad board reading is:

• Generic strategic advice with the advisor's name pasted on
• Every advisor saying the same thing in different words
• Long preambles before the actual point
• "In summary" closers that recap rather than sharpening
• Fabricated quotes or invented biographical claims

What the board cannot do

• Real-time market data
• Knowledge of the user's actual numbers (unless they tell you)
• Legal, financial, or medical advice
• A substitute for talking to the actual humans

It's a structured way to stress-test thinking. Use accordingly — and run /board:audit every few months to make sure the roster still fits.