Understand the PM-to-Director transition through altitude and horizon thinking. Use when diagnosing scope, time-horizon, or leadership-level gaps.
jobs-to-be-done
jobs-to-be-done is an open-source productivity skill for Claude Code and compatible agents, published by deanpeters. Its author describes it as: “Uncover customer jobs, pains, and gains in a structured JTBD format. Use when clarifying unmet needs, repositioning a product, or improving discovery and messaging.”. The project has 6.5k stars on GitHub and ships custom license terms, so review them before reuse. Add it to your setup with `/plugin marketplace add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills`.
What jobs-to-be-done does
Systematically explore what customers are trying to accomplish (functional, social, emotional jobs), the pains they experience, and the gains they seek. Use this framework to uncover unmet needs, validate product ideas, and ensure your solution addresses real motivations—not just surface-level feature requests.
Installation
Add jobs-to-be-done to your agent with:
/plugin marketplace add deanpeters/Product-Manager-SkillsAlways review a skill's source before installing it. This command comes from the skill's public repository; the linked repo is the source of truth for exact setup steps.
What's inside
The SKILL.md for jobs-to-be-done is organised into these sections:
- Purpose
- Input
- Key Concepts
- The Jobs-to-be-Done Framework
- Why This Structure Works
- Anti-Patterns (What This Is NOT)
- When to Use This
- When NOT to Use This
- Application
- Step 1: Define the Context
- Step 2: Explore Customer Jobs
- Step 3: Identify Pains
When to use it
Reach for jobs-to-be-done when you want productivity help from your agent without writing the same instructions every session. Load the skill and the agent picks it up automatically for relevant tasks.
Strengths
- Ships in deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills, an established project with 6,527 GitHub stars
- Actively maintained (recent commits)
Things to check
- No license declared — confirm terms with the author before reuse
Topics
Frequently asked questions
- What does jobs-to-be-done do?
- Uncover customer jobs, pains, and gains in a structured JTBD format. Use when clarifying unmet needs, repositioning a product, or improving discovery and messaging.
- How do I install jobs-to-be-done?
- Run /plugin marketplace add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills in your agent, then reload your skills. Review the source at https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills before installing.
- Is jobs-to-be-done free to use?
- jobs-to-be-done is publicly available on GitHub, but deanpeters has not declared a standard open-source license (Other). Confirm the terms with the author before reusing it.
- Where does jobs-to-be-done come from?
- jobs-to-be-done ships inside deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills, a repository that contains 41 catalogued skills in total. The repository's 6,527 GitHub stars apply to that whole collection, not to this skill on its own.
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