From skills-for-humanity
Extracts recurring failure modes from similar past situations to identify risks before they become post-mortem findings.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/skills-for-humanity:s4h-historical-failure-analysisThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Post-mortems reveal the same failure modes repeating across organisations, industries,
Post-mortems reveal the same failure modes repeating across organisations, industries, and eras. Execution failure at handoff. Stakeholder misalignment discovered too late. Scope expansion under pressure that destroys the original design. Underestimated dependencies that required other things to change first. The failure modes aren't a mystery — they just don't get applied prospectively. This skill does that: surfaces which patterns are present now, before they become post-mortem findings.
Step 1: Describe the Type of Endeavour What kind of thing is this? A product launch, an organisational transformation, a technology implementation, a partnership negotiation, a strategic pivot, a scaling operation. Describe it in type terms — this determines which failure mode library to draw from.
Framing check: Confirm the specific endeavour before continuing. State what you've identified — the type of endeavour and its key parameters (scale, stage, domain) — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:
Step 2: Identify Common Failure Modes for This Type What do post-mortems and retrospectives reveal about this category? Draw from known patterns:
Step 3: Test Each Against the Current Situation For each failure mode: is it present in current conditions? What are the specific early warning signs that would indicate it is activating? Be concrete — not "stakeholder misalignment might occur" but the specific evidence of it that is or isn't visible right now.
Step 4: Rank by Probability Times Impact
Before narrowing: Show the complete set of failure modes identified in Step 3 to the user first. Use AskUserQuestion:
Which failure modes pose the greatest risk given both their likelihood in this specific situation and their consequence if they occur? Use H/M/L ratings for each dimension. Priority is the product — a medium-probability, high-impact failure mode outranks a high-probability, low-impact one.
Step 5: Pre-emptive Actions for the Top Three For the top 3 by probability × impact: what specific action taken now — before the failure mode activates — would reduce its probability or limit its damage?
Before proceeding, use the AskUserQuestion tool. State your interpretation of the situation in 1–2 sentences — what is being analyzed and what the core question is — then ask:
Proceed based on their selection. If the user reframes, incorporate the correction before running any analysis.
Failure Mode Table
| Failure Mode | Typical Cause | Early Warning Signs | Present? | Probability | Impact | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [mode name] | [root cause] | [observable signals] | [Y/N/partial] | [H/M/L] | [H/M/L] | [rank] |
Top 3 Failure Modes
For each of the top 3:
The goal is not exhaustive risk listing — a long list produces paralysis, not prevention. Identify the 2-3 failure modes most likely to be fatal to this specific endeavour and act on them now. The ones not in the top 3 are worth monitoring but not worth significant pre-emptive effort.
After delivering this output, use AskUserQuestion to offer the next move:
/s4h-decision-premortem-analysis — Apply historical failure patterns to the current decision/s4h-constraint-hardness-testing — Test which historical failure causes are still hard constraints today/s4h-strategy-positioning — Position to avoid repeating historical failure modesnpx claudepluginhub human-avatar/skills-for-humanityPerforms pre-mortem analysis imagining catastrophic failures for uncommitted plans or existing systems via parallel lenses, yielding prioritized risk registers with early warnings.
Performs pre-mortem analysis assuming total failure to identify specific risks, leading indicators, and circuit breakers across technical, organizational, external, temporal, and assumption categories. For project plans, architecture, and launches.
Runs a prospective failure analysis using Gary Klein's swing-mortem technique. Assumes complete failure and works backward to identify risks, leading indicators, and circuit breakers for project plans, architecture decisions, or feature launches.