What do I need to use Personal WIP Limits?

The full in-progress pile; The finish lines; The involuntary WIP; The historical finish rate.

Is Personal WIP Limits 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.

Personal WIP Limits

Q: How do I know the Personal WIP Limits output is good?

The skill verifies itself against its own quality checks: Active items are outcomes with finish lines, capped at three; Every parked item has its state note and demotion was said aloud; Blocked work lives in the waiting lane with chase dates, not in slots; The start-gate question is installed at the door.

🔵 Stable🕐 updated 2026-10-06 🔷 SkillSpec L3 pm-cowork

Cap your work-in-progress so things finish — the personal WIP limit (3 active outcomes, defended), the finish-before-start rule with its exceptions named, the parking lot for the overflow, and the throughput evidence that converts the skeptic. Use when asked I have twelve things half-done, why does nothing ever finish, set a WIP limit for my work, or I start everything and complete nothing. Produces the active-list cap, the parking protocol, the start-gate, and the two-week throughput experiment.

▶ Run it free — no key needed 📝 Grade your existing draft ⬇ Add to Claude (works in Duet) 📱 Use as an app View SKILL.md ↗ What changed

🗣 Say this to your agent

“I have twelve things half-done.”“Why does nothing ever finish?”“Set a WIP limit for my work.”“I start everything and complete nothing.”

What to give it

▸The full in-progress pile — everything started-and-unfinished, honestly (the count is the diagnosis; most people find 8–15)

▸The finish lines — per item, what done means ([delegation-brief](../delegation-brief/SKILL.md) done-test grain); half the pile usually has no finish line, which is *why* it can't finish

▸The involuntary WIP — the boss-assigned and the blocked-on-others; the cap counts what the user controls, and the blocked get their own lane (waiting ≠ active)

▸The historical finish rate — roughly, what actually completed in the last month (the baseline the experiment beats)

✅ 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.

✓Active items are outcomes with finish lines, capped at three

✓Every parked item has its state note and demotion was said aloud

✓Blocked work lives in the waiting lane with chase dates, not in slots

✓The start-gate question is installed at the door

✓The experiment has a predicted number and a review date

⚠️ What it refuses to do

Do not cap tasks instead of outcomes — thirty subtasks of one outcome is one slot, not thirty

Do not park silently — unconscious demotion is just the old drift wearing a system's badge

Do not let blocked work squat in active slots — waiting is a lane, not a job

Do not negotiate the cap upward mid-crunch — the crunch is the argument *for* the cap

Do not skip the experiment — the limit survives on its own throughput evidence or not at all

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 -p pm-claude-skills 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="personal-wip-limits"></div>
<script src="https://mohitagw15856.github.io/pm-claude-skills/embed.js" async></script>

💬 Discussion

Personal WIP Limits is one of 1326 open-source professional AI agent skills — all SkillSpec L3. Try them all in the browser · ⭐ Star on GitHub · Browse the full catalog