What do I need to use Outline Before Prose?

The doc's job; The reader, specifically; The material; The reviewer.

Is Outline Before Prose free to use?

Yes — run it free in the browser playground (no API key needed for the sponsored trial, or bring any provider key), or install it into Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT and more via npx pm-claude-skills. MIT-licensed and open source.

Outline Before Prose

Q: How do I know the Outline Before Prose output is good?

The skill verifies itself against its own quality checks: Every section is a disagreeable claim, not a topic word; The header names reader, decision, and budget — and every section passed its test; Order makes each claim set up the next; The outline reviewer is the person whose late restructuring would cost most.

🔵 Stable🕐 updated 2026-07-19 🔷 SkillSpec L3 pm-cowork

Outline documents before drafting them — the argument skeleton that gets alignment cheaply, the one-line-per-section discipline, and the review-the-outline step that saves rewriting the prose. Use when asked help me start this document, outline before I write, why do my docs get rewritten from scratch in review, or get sign-off before drafting. Produces the outline with each section's claim (not topic), the reader-and-decision header, the outline review step, and the expansion rules.

▶ Run it free — no key needed 📝 Grade your existing draft View SKILL.md ↗

What to give it

▸The doc's job — what the reader should *do* after reading (approve, decide, follow, stop worrying); docs without a job become tours

▸The reader, specifically — their context level and their likely objection; the outline argues to someone

▸The material — what's known, what evidence exists, the conclusion if one is already honest — outlines organize material; they don't survive its absence

▸The reviewer — whose restructuring would hurt most later; that's who reviews the outline now

✅ The bar it holds itself to

Every skill in this library self-verifies — these are this skill's own quality checks, straight from its definition.

✓Every section is a disagreeable claim, not a topic word

✓The header names reader, decision, and budget — and every section passed its test

✓Order makes each claim set up the next

✓The outline reviewer is the person whose late restructuring would cost most

✓Drafting rules prevent silent new sections

⚠️ What it refuses to do

Do not outline in topics — "Background / Analysis / Conclusion" postpones every real decision to prose

Do not draft while outlining — pretty sentences at skeleton stage are premature attachment

Do not skip the review because the outline "is obvious" — obvious outlines take five minutes to confirm and two days to rewrite

Do not defend outline structure at prose review — that conversation was available cheaper earlier; have it earlier

Do not outline without the material — a skeleton of unknowns is a research plan wearing a doc's clothes, and should be named as one

Install

npx pm-claude-skills add --agent claude   # or codex · cursor · gemini · hermes
# or one-line MCP (every skill, any client):
claude mcp add pm-skills -- npx -y pm-claude-skills-mcp

Related skills

🔌 Embed this skill

Drop this on your blog, docs, or site — it renders a "Run this skill" card:

<div data-pm-skill="outline-before-prose"></div>
<script src="https://mohitagw15856.github.io/pm-claude-skills/embed.js" async></script>

💬 Discussion

Outline Before Prose is one of 750 open-source professional AI agent skills — all SkillSpec L3. Try them all in the browser · ⭐ Star on GitHub · Browse the full catalog