maker-council
When you want multiple expert perspectives on a founder/operator question — a simulated personal board of advisors staffed by legendary founders, CEOs, and operators (Jason Fried, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, Bob Iger, Paul Graham, Naval Ravikant, Sara Blakely). Bring a real decision — \"should I raise prices?\", \"hire my first employee?\", \"raise or bootstrap?\", \"kill this project?\" — and the council weighs in through their documented frameworks, surfaces where they disagree, and synthesizes a recommendation. Also use when the user mentions 'maker council,' 'board of advisors,' 'what would Bezos do,' 'what would Jason Fried say,' 'channel Naval,' 'ask the council,' 'get multiple perspectives on this decision,' or asks how a famous founder would approach their problem. Optional live-research pass grounds takes in what each member has actually said (via deep-research / watch-video / last30days). Sibling of marketing-skills' marketing-council (marketing questions go there; company-building and operator questions come here). Archives sessions to ~/.config/makerskills/maker-council/archive/. For committing to one of the surfaced directions, hand off to decide.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/coreyhaines31/makerskills /tmp/maker-council && cp -r /tmp/maker-council/skills/maker-council ~/.claude/skills/maker-councilSKILL.md
# /maker-council — Your personal board of advisors
You convene a **simulated board of founders and operators**: people whose documented frameworks, published positions, and known heuristics you apply to the user's specific situation. The value isn't any single take — it's the *disagreement*. The bench is built from operators whose lenses collide (calm-profitable vs. hardcore-urgency, bootstrap vs. big-bets, institution vs. leverage), so the user sees the real trade-offs before choosing.
**This is persona simulation, not the real people.** Every take must be grounded in what the member actually wrote or said (see Grounding Rules). Label the output as simulation.
**Lane check:** marketing questions (positioning, copy, ads, offers) → `marketing-skills:marketing-council`. Company-building, money, hiring, focus, pace, and leverage questions → here. Both installed? Route by the question, and say which council convened.
## Before starting
Clarify (ask only for what's missing, one message):
1. **The question** — what decision or situation is the council reviewing?
2. **Context** — stage, headcount, revenue shape, runway, what's been tried. Check memory (`project_*.md`) and `${MAKERSKILLS_CONFIG:-$HOME/.config/makerskills}/business-brainstorm/portfolio.local.md` before asking — the user may already be on file.
3. **The stakes** — what happens if this goes well or badly?
4. **Session mode** — quick take, council session, or full council. Default: council session.
## Session modes
| Mode | Seats | When |
|------|-------|------|
| **Quick take** | 1 member | "What would Fried say about this schedule?" — a single named member |
| **Council session** (default) | 3–5 members | A real decision that benefits from conflicting lenses |
| **Full council** | All 8 | Bet-the-company decisions — long output; offer only when stakes justify it |
## The bench
Eight members, chosen so their lenses collide. Full dossiers live in `references/advisors/` — load only the seated members' files.
| Member | Lens | File |
|--------|------|------|
| **Jason Fried** | Calm company — profitability over growth, small teams, no VC | [jason-fried.md](references/advisors/jason-fried.md) |
| **Elon Musk** | First principles, delete-the-part, maniacal urgency | [elon-musk.md](references/advisors/elon-musk.md) |
| **Jeff Bezos** | Day 1 — one-way/two-way doors, customer obsession, long-term | [jeff-bezos.md](references/advisors/jeff-bezos.md) |
| **Jensen Huang** | Flat org, "the mission is the boss," strategic pain tolerance | [jensen-huang.md](references/advisors/jensen-huang.md) |
| **Bob Iger** | Big creative bets, brand stewardship, optimism as leadership | [bob-iger.md](references/advisors/bob-iger.md) |
| **Paul Graham** | Startups — do things that don't scale, default alive, make something people want | [paul-graham.md](references/advisors/paul-graham.md) |
| **Naval Ravikant** | Personal leverage — specific knowledge, productize yourself | [naval-ravikant.md](references/advisors/naval-ravikant.md) |
| **Sara Blakely** | Bootstrapped resourcefulness — sell first, own everything, embrace not-knowing | [sara-blakely.md](references/advisors/sara-blakely.md) |
## Seating the council
For a council session, seat 3–5:
1. **2–3 whose lens directly fits the question type** (table below).
2. **Always seat at least one designated dissenter** — a member whose documented position conflicts with where the question is leaning. A council that agrees is a mirror, not a board.
3. Honor explicit requests ("I want Fried and Musk on this").
| Question type | Strong fits | Natural dissenters |
|---------------|-------------|-------------------|
| Raise vs. bootstrap | Fried, Blakely, Graham | Iger (some bets need capital), Bezos (invest ahead of proof) |
| Pricing / monetization | Blakely, Naval, Fried (charge real money) | Bezos (low-margin flywheel) |
| First hires / org design | Jensen, Fried, Iger | Naval (leverage before headcount) |
| Focus / kill a project | Musk (delete it), Iger (3 priorities max), Graham (default alive?) | Bezos (seeds take seven years) |
| New product / market bet | Bezos, Jensen (zero-billion markets), Iger | Fried (stay small, do the obvious work) |
| Growth stall | Graham, Musk, Naval | Fried (does it actually need to grow?) |
| Pace / intensity / burnout | Fried, Naval | Musk, Jensen (intensity as strategy) |
| Solo leverage / productize yourself | Naval, Graham, Blakely | Iger (his documented case for the long institutional apprenticeship) |
## Session protocol
1. **Load the seated members' dossiers** from `references/advisors/`.
2. **Optional live research pass** — see below. Offer it when the question is specific enough that documented positions may not cover it, or the user wants citations.
3. **Each member's take** — 2–4 paragraphs:
- Open with the member applying their *signature questions* to the user's case
- Apply their frameworks to the specifics (the dossier lists them) — not generic advice with a name attached
- State their recommendation with the conviction they'd actually have
- Written in their voice per the dossier's voice notes, without fabricated quotes
4. **The disagreement map** — the most valuable section. Identify 2–4 genuine conflicts, name the underlying trade-off each represents (e.g., "Fried vs. Musk here is really sustainability vs. speed — which one is *this* company's binding constraint?"), and say what evidence would settle each.
5. **Chair's synthesis** — the recommendation that best fits *this* user's stage and constraints; which member's warning to keep as a tripwire; concrete next steps with skill handoffs.
## Live research pass
When the topic is specific or the user wants sources, go beyond the dossiers:
- **`deep-research`** — find what seated members have actually said or written about this topic class (books, shareholder letters, essays, interviews, podcasts). The brief archives per deep-research's own convention.
- **`watch-video`** — pull transWhen you want to pressure-test a potential new business, product, or side project against the serial-founder filter. Not \"marketing ideas for a product\" (that's marketing-skills:marketing-ideas) — this is \"should this business exist + can you win it.\" Runs the idea through a structured framework (problem, audience, wedge, monetization, moat, portfolio fit, distribution, energy fit, opportunity cost), checks domain availability via /domain, optionally triggers /deep-research for market validation, and outputs a viability brief: build / sleep on it / pass. Archives every idea to ~/.config/makerskills/business-brainstorm/archive/ so past work is searchable. Triggers on \"/business-brainstorm,\" \"/brainstorm,\" \"new business idea,\" \"should I build X,\" \"pressure test this idea,\" \"validate this idea,\" \"is X a good business,\" \"what about a [type] for [audience].\"
Your team's shared, AI-ready knowledge base — people, companies, meetings, SOPs, and decisions structured so Claude can answer questions on your team's behalf. Team-scope sibling to second-brain (which is personal-scope). Seven modes — capture (drop something into the right structured dir), compile (process into wiki pages, update INDEX.md), query (answer from the corpus with trust weighting, save to outputs/), review (triage queue — verify / deprecate / supersede unreviewed and stale captures so wrong info never becomes context), lint (orphans / stale / contradictions / gaps), connect (suggest new wikilinks), search (quick lookup). Structured raw dirs (people/, companies/, meetings/, sops/, decisions/, customer-language/, recurring-questions/, sales-objections/) instead of second-brain's flat type-prefixed raw/. Multi-author aware — every capture stamps author + timestamp + trust status. Optional auto-sync from Fathom/Gong/Granola call transcripts, Slack/email exports, CRM. Defaults to a vault at ${COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT:-$HOME/Documents/CompanyBrain}/. Triggers on "/company-brain," "/cb," "capture this into the team brain," "log this meeting," "add this person to the team brain," "save this SOP," "compile the company wiki," "query the team brain," "what does the team know about X," "review the company brain," "cull the team brain," "lint the company brain," "who's the internal expert on X.
Monthly CFO workflow for a company or agency — pull raw data from bank + payment processor + payroll + expense management, categorize and reconcile, compute end-of-month cash via transaction-sum method, update a scenario projector for forward forecasting, write the monthly snapshot report, surface decisions to leadership. Modes — monthly (default; the standing report), weekly (thin cash pulse), scenario (ad-hoc modeling in the projector), pickup (resume where the prior run left off). Anonymized team-scope sibling to personal-cfo (which handles personal household finances). Composes with company-brain (report gets stored + wiki-indexed there), toolify (wire company-specific data sources), loopify (schedule the monthly + weekly runs). Triggers on "/company-cfo," "/cfo," "monthly cash report," "do the CFO snapshot," "CFO monthly," "let's run CFO," "cash projection," "runway forecast," "monthly financials," "cash pulse.
When you have a decision to make and want a structured workflow that picks the load-bearing questions, walks through them, reaches a call (or "wait"), and archives the rationale for future reference. Based on the 37signals Guide to Making Decisions (38 questions) plus house additions like Q39 opportunity cost ("what does saying yes displace?"). Triages to 6–8 relevant questions per decision instead of forcing the full set. Archives every decision to ~/.config/makerskills/decide/archive/ with a revisit date so you can check later whether the call was right. Triggers on "/decide," "help me decide," "should I [X]," "I need to make a decision about," "stuck on a decision," "deciding between," "go/no-go on," "what should I do about." This is both the decision-making workflow AND the decision log — making the decision is the act of logging it.
When you want multi-source, multi-step research on a topic — competitor research before a sales call, market research for a new business idea, positioning angles, due diligence on a partnership or podcast guest, tech decision research (which DB, which auth), or any \"I need to actually understand X.\" Combines WebSearch, WebFetch, agent-browser, /last30days (Reddit/X/YouTube/HN/web recency), memory, and Notion. Outputs a structured brief with citations, contradictions, gaps, and recommended next steps. Archives every research run to ~/.config/makerskills/deep-research/archive/ so past work is searchable. Triggers on \"/deep-research,\" \"research X,\" \"investigate X,\" \"do a deep dive on X,\" \"look into X,\" \"what's actually happening with X,\" \"due diligence on X,\" \"validate this market.\" Differs from a one-shot WebSearch: this is multi-pass with verification.
When you want to brainstorm and check available .com domains for a new project — brand naming, aftermarket pricing (HugeDomains / Afternic / Sedo / Dan), USPTO trademark screening, and social handle availability. Built on Laura Roeder's \"work backwards from availability, not from a name you fell in love with\" methodology. Uses Vercel CLI + whois + Domainr API + Namecheap API + agent-browser for the pieces each tool actually reliably supports (multi-tool ensemble because no single tool covers everything cleanly). 11-step workflow: budget → brainstorm → primary availability check → whois cross-check → Domainr aggregation → Namecheap price → aftermarket sweep (+ liveness probe for parked/dead domains, drop-watch for expiring ones) → bucket → negotiate → NAME research (trademark + socials) → buy. Triggers on \"/domain,\" \"find a domain,\" \"check domain availability,\" \"brainstorm a domain,\" \"what .com is available for X,\" \"domain hunt,\" \"name my project,\" \"is X.com available,\" \"aftermarket price on X.com,\" \"trademark check for X.\"
Gary Vaynerchuk's jab-jab-jab-right-hook framework applied to a personal portfolio rotation on X and LinkedIn. Jabs = build-in-public + educational (value). Hooks = promo (the ask). Each property in the user's configured portfolio (see `~/.config/makerskills/jab-hook/properties.yaml`) gets a hook at least once every ~3 weeks; jabs fill the rest. Drafts go into the user's Typefully workspace via MCP. Modes — plan (7-day plan), pick-next (single post), audit (coverage report), draft (specific post). Triggers on "/jab-hook," "what should I post," "plan my socials," "next promo," "next jab," "next hook," "social rotation," "promote [property]," "BIP post," "audit my socials," "what haven't I posted about.
When you want to set up an agent loop, cron-scheduled task, or recurring workflow that runs autonomously in Claude Code. Judgment layer on top of ScheduleWakeup, CronCreate, and the /loop skill — decides whether to use dynamic pacing (self-scheduling wake-ups), cron scheduling (fixed intervals), or a one-shot loop; tunes delay to avoid the 5-minute cache-miss cliff; designs idempotent loop bodies; sets bail-out conditions so loops don't run forever. Examples of loops to loopify — weekly review pulse, daily brief generation, hourly monitoring of a metric, periodic vault compilation, upstream-check for an adapted skill, sponsorship-pipeline refresh, YouTube-transcript-batch-download, morning startup routine. Triggers on "/loopify," "set up a loop," "schedule this task," "run this daily," "run this weekly," "cron this," "make this recurring," "automate this on a schedule," "keep this running until X." Part of the -ify trifecta (skillify / toolify / loopify) for extending Claude Code. NOT for authoring a new skill — that's skillify. NOT for adding a tool/integration — that's toolify.