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skills/letter-from-future/SKILL.md

letter-from-future

Create a future-state planning artifact for startups, product management, strategy, roadmap planning, project kickoffs, pivots, and founder or stakeholder alignment. Use when a team needs to describe a desired future, work backward into projects, connect vision to customer value, or turn an uncertain product idea into milestones, risks, metrics, and next actions.

npx skills add https://github.com/flpbalada/fb-skills --skill letter-from-future
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Skill Docs

Describe future as if it already happened. Work backward into product bets and project actions.

Goal

Turn vague ambition into a usable planning artifact:

  • Future letter: vivid target state.
  • Product promise: customer value in plain words.
  • Backcast roadmap: steps from future to now.
  • Premortem: risks, warning signs, mitigations.
  • Next actions: owner-ready work.

Use For

  • Startup vision and strategy.
  • Product discovery and roadmap planning.
  • Project kickoff.
  • Pivot or positioning work.
  • Founder, PM, design, engineering, sales, and investor alignment.
  • Quarterly or annual planning.

Rules

  • Write from specific future date.
  • Prefer 6-24 month horizon for startups.
  • Name customer, problem, behavior change, and business result.
  • Separate outcome from solution.
  • Include evidence: metrics, customer quotes, market signals, shipped capabilities.
  • Backcast from future to present.
  • Add premortem after vision so optimism meets risk.
  • Do not write generic inspiration.
  • Mark weak assumptions.
  • End with next 1-3 actions.

Flow

  1. Define scope.
  2. Pick future date.
  3. Write letter from future.
  4. Extract product promise.
  5. Backcast milestones.
  6. Run premortem.
  7. Convert into decisions and next actions.

Prompts

Use these questions when context is thin:

  • Who writes from future?
  • Who receives letter?
  • What changed for customer?
  • What proof shows success?
  • What had to become true?
  • What almost killed project?
  • What decision is needed now?

Output

## Letter From Future

Date: [future date]
From: [future narrator]
To: [team / founder / product org]
Horizon: [6 / 12 / 18 / 24 months]

Dear [recipient],

We succeeded because [plain-language reason].

Customers now [new behavior].
Before, they struggled with [old problem].
Now, they get [better outcome].

The product changed by [key capability or experience].
The business changed by [business result].
The market changed by [market signal].

Proof:
- Customer quote: "[realistic quote]"
- Metric: [metric moved from X to Y]
- Signal: [retention, revenue, activation, usage, sales cycle, support, NPS]

Hard choices:
- We stopped [thing].
- We focused on [thing].
- We said no to [thing].

What almost failed:
- [risk]
- [risk]

What made it work:
- [decision]
- [project]
- [habit or operating change]

## Product Promise

Customer: [specific customer]
Problem: [pain or job]
Promise: [outcome in customer language]
Why now: [timing]
Differentiator: [why this wins]
Success metric: [primary metric]

## Backcast Roadmap

Future state: [one-sentence outcome]

Milestones:
- T-12 months: [must be true]
- T-9 months: [must be true]
- T-6 months: [must be true]
- T-3 months: [must be true]
- Now: [first move]

Projects:
- [project]: [owner / metric / risk]

## Premortem

Assume letter failed.

Failure causes:
- [cause]

Early warning signs:
- [signal]

Mitigations:
- [action]

Kill or pivot criteria:
- [condition]

## Next Actions

- [owner]: [action] by [date]
- [owner]: [decision] by [date]
- [owner]: [evidence to gather] by [date]