---
name: premortem-assassin
description: "Kill the plan on paper before reality does it for money. Use when a plan, launch, migration, or strategy is about to be committed to and nobody has tried hard to murder it yet — the assassin attacks through twelve named failure vectors and writes the post-mortem of the failure that hasn't happened. Produces a premortem: the death narrative, the twelve-vector attack with survival verdicts, the three kill-shots most likely to land, and the cheap tripwires that would give early warning."
---

# Premortem Assassin

A premortem inverts the postmortem: assume the plan is already dead, then explain how it died. Most teams do this politely and learn nothing. The assassin does it professionally — every plan gets attacked through the same twelve vectors, so the blind spot the team shares cannot protect itself.

## Required Inputs

- **The plan** — the actual document, not a summary. The assassin attacks what's written, and what's *missing* from what's written.
- **The success definition** — what "it worked" means, with a number and a date. Without it, the assassin first shows that the plan can't fail *visibly*, which is its own kill-shot.
- Optional: constraints already known (budget ceiling, headcount, hard deadline) and the political context (who wants this to fail).

## The Twelve Vectors

Attack through every one; report survival honestly (a plan that "fails" all twelve was attacked lazily):

1. **The dependency that lies** — the external team/vendor/API whose "yes" was optimistic
2. **The estimate that compounds** — the task whose overrun cascades
3. **The silent stakeholder** — approved it, never bought it, kills it at week 9
4. **The demand mirage** — the interest that was politeness
5. **The key person** — the plan is secretly one resignation from collapse
6. **The integration cliff** — parts that work, whole that doesn't
7. **The regulatory/legal tripwire** — the clause nobody read
8. **The incentive misfire** — the plan asks people to act against their own scoreboard
9. **The competitor's cheap counter** — the one move that neutralises months of work
10. **The success catastrophe** — it works, and the load/support/cost of working kills it
11. **The narrative collapse** — one bad week and leadership stops believing
12. **The zombie outcome** — it neither fails nor works; it shambles on eating resources (the most common death, the least planned-for)

## Output Format

1. **The obituary** (≤150 words) — it's 12 months later and the plan is dead; the honest narrative of how, written as the postmortem's summary paragraph.
2. **The attack table** — vector | verdict (☠️ likely kill / ⚠️ wound / 🛡 survives) | the specific mechanism *in this plan*, quoting it where possible.
3. **The three kill-shots** — the vectors most likely to actually land, each with: earliest visible symptom, the week it becomes irreversible, and the cheapest pre-emption.
4. **Tripwires** — 3-5 observable, dated early warnings ("if X isn't true by <date>, vector 4 is live") the team can put on a calendar today.

## Quality Checks

- [ ] Every vector was attacked against THIS plan's specifics — no generic risk boilerplate that could attach to any project
- [ ] At least three verdicts are 🛡 survives — an all-kill report means the attack was theatrical, not forensic
- [ ] Each kill-shot names the week of irreversibility, not just the risk
- [ ] Every tripwire is observable and dated — someone could put it in a calendar without further thought
- [ ] The obituary reads like a real postmortem, not satire — the tone that makes teams take it seriously

## Anti-Patterns

- [ ] Do not soften kill-shots into "considerations" — the assassin's value is that it does not care about morale
- [ ] Do not invent facts about the plan — attack what is written and flag what is absent; absence is evidence
- [ ] Do not produce more than three kill-shots — twelve wounds ranked equally is a risk register, and risk registers are where warnings go to die
- [ ] Do not skip the zombie vector — teams plan for explosion and never for the shamble
- [ ] Do not attack the people — every mechanism must route through structure, incentive, or process, never through "X is bad at their job"

## Example Trigger Phrases

- "Kill this plan on paper."
- "Run a premortem on our launch."
- "How will this migration fail?"
- "Attack this strategy before we commit."