---
name: pre-mortem-panel
description: "Imagine your plan already failed, then get five independent 'here's why it died' stories — before you commit. Use when asked to pre-mortem this, why might this fail, what are the risks before I start, or imagine this went wrong. Produces five distinct failure narratives (each from a different cause — execution, timing, people, external, wrong-assumption), the most likely and most lethal among them, the early warning signs of each, and the specific mitigations worth doing now — catching failures while they're still cheap to prevent."
---

# Pre-Mortem Panel

A pre-mortem beats a risk list because it's concrete: you assume the failure already happened and explain it, which surfaces problems a bland "what are the risks?" never does. This runs five *independent* pre-mortems from different causes, so you don't just get five versions of the same fear — you get the full failure surface, ranked, with the warning signs and the fixes worth doing before you start.

## What This Skill Produces

- **Five failure stories** — each a vivid "it's six months later and this failed because…" from a different root cause (execution, timing/market, people, external shock, a wrong core assumption)
- **Most likely vs. most lethal** — which failure is most probable and which would hurt most (they're often different)
- **Early warning signs** — the signals that each failure is starting to happen, so you can catch it live
- **Mitigations worth doing now** — the specific, prioritized moves to prevent or de-risk the top failures

## Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:
- **The plan or project** — what you're about to commit to
- **The timeframe** — when "did it work?" gets answered
- **What's at stake** — so we prioritize lethal vs. minor failures
- **Known worries** — anything already nagging you

## Framework: Assume It Failed, From Five Angles

1. **Jump to the failure.** Assume the plan has already failed — this concreteness surfaces risks that abstract risk-listing misses.
2. **Diversify the causes.** Run five independent stories from genuinely different roots so you cover the whole failure surface, not one fear five times.
3. **Rank likely vs. lethal.** Separate the most probable failure from the most damaging — plan for both, but differently.
4. **Find the early signals.** For the top failures, name the leading indicators you'd actually see, so you can react before it's terminal.
5. **Mitigate now.** Turn the top risks into specific actions worth taking before you start, prioritized by leverage.

## Output Format

### Pre-mortem: [the plan] · by [timeframe]

**Five ways it died**
1. **Execution:** [story]. 2. **Timing/market:** [story]. 3. **People:** [story]. 4. **External:** [story]. 5. **Wrong assumption:** [story].

**Most likely:** [x]. **Most lethal:** [y].
**Early warning signs:** [signal → which failure it means].
**Do now to de-risk:** [prioritized mitigations].

## Quality Checks
- [ ] Five failure stories from genuinely different root causes
- [ ] They're concrete narratives, not a vague risk list
- [ ] Most-likely and most-lethal are distinguished
- [ ] Early warning signs are named for the top failures
- [ ] Specific, prioritized mitigations are proposed

## Anti-Patterns
- **One fear repeated** five times.
- **Abstract risks** ("competition") instead of concrete stories.
- **Treating likely and lethal as the same.**
- **Warnings with no mitigations** to act on.

## Example Trigger Phrases
- "Pre-mortem my product launch."
- "Imagine my trip / event / project went wrong — why?"
- "What are the ways this could fail before I commit?"
- "Run a pre-mortem on my career move."
- "Five reasons this plan might die, and how to prevent them."