product-view

Part of tstanmay13/claude-skills — add one marketplace, get all my skills.

A Claude Code and Codex skill that flips Claude out of code-language and into product-language — describing what the human on the other side of the screen experiences — until you explicitly ask for the code.

product-view in action — a Sentry stack trace reframed as customer impact, no code-language

Illustrative example of the skill's output. Re-render with vhs assets/demo.tape.

Before / after

Without product-view:

When a user signs in, the auth middleware validates the JWT, hits the /me endpoint to fetch the user record, and dispatches a LOGIN_SUCCESS action. The frontend then mounts the dashboard route and the API begins polling for unread notifications.

With product-view:

They tap "Sign In", type their email and password, and a moment later they're looking at their dashboard. A small red dot appears on the bell icon — they have unread messages.

Same flow. The first describes the code. The second describes what actually happened to the person.

What this is

A conversational mode. You flip it on and Claude stays in product-space — what the user sees, what they do, what changes for them, what they feel — until you flip it off or explicitly ask for the code.

Three sub-modes:

Mode	Use when	You get
explain	You want a walkthrough of an existing feature	What the user experiences end-to-end
reframe	You have a bug, ticket, PR, or stack trace	Customer impact in plain terms
plan	You're sketching new functionality	The user's goal and journey, before any implementation

What this isn't

Other skill	What it does	Why this is different
`code-to-prd`	One-shot scan of a repo → writes PRD `.md` files	`product-view` is a live conversational mode, not a document generator
Sachin Rekhi's release-notes skill	Commit URL → user-facing release note	`product-view` works on any artifact (code, ticket, idea), at any time, not just at ship-time
`mattpocock/skills` `zoom-out`	Zooms up within code (modules, callers, glossary)	`zoom-out` stays inside code; `product-view` zooms out of code entirely
Multi-perspective code review (e.g. Review Squad)	Multi-subagent panel reviews from several personas	`product-view` is single-agent, in-line, and the user perspective is the only lens
`wondelai/skills` (JTBD, lean-startup, etc.)	Teach and apply strategic product frameworks	`product-view` operates on whatever's in context; no framework prescribed

If you want a generated PRD, a release note, a multi-persona review, or a strategic exercise, those skills exist and they're better at their thing than product-view would be. This skill does one move: it stops the conversation from sneaking code-language into descriptions of the product.

Claude Code and Codex

The same skill files support both agents. Install from the combined catalog:

claude plugin marketplace add tstanmay13/claude-skills
claude plugin install product-view@tstanmay13-skills
codex plugin marketplace add tstanmay13/claude-skills
codex plugin add product-view@tstanmay13-skills

Invoke /product-view in Claude Code or $product-view in Codex. Restart the agent after installation or updates. The repository name claude-skills is retained for existing installs; its catalog now serves both agents.

plugin.json is the portable package manifest; .claude-plugin/plugin.json and .codex-plugin/plugin.json provide runtime compatibility. All three share one version and one skills/ directory. Source changes belong here, never in an installed plugin cache. Directory publication is separate from GitHub distribution; see the catalog release guide.

Other installation options

The skill ships as a Claude Code plugin. From inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add tstanmay13/product-view
/plugin install product-view@tstanmay13-product-view

Or, for a manual install, clone into ~/.claude/skills/:

git clone https://github.com/tstanmay13/product-view.git ~/.claude/skills/product-view-repo
ln -s ~/.claude/skills/product-view-repo/skills/product-view ~/.claude/skills/product-view

How to use it

Three activation modes

On-demand — say any of these and the skill kicks in for that turn:

/product-view
"from the product perspective"
"as a user flow"
"what does this look like to the user / customer / player / reader"
"translate this"
"in plain terms"
"outside-in"

Persistent — turn it on and leave it on:

view on

It stays on for every subsequent message. Turn off with:

view off

Auto-activation — when you ask Claude to explain a feature, walk through how something works, plan new functionality, or summarize a bug ticket, the skill activates on its own. This is intentional: most software explanations are improved by leading with the product view.

It explicitly does not auto-activate on algorithmic, performance, infrastructure, or code-style questions. See When NOT to use it.

Audience flexibility

The "user" isn't always called "user". The skill picks the right word for the context:

B2B SaaS → customer
Game → player
Blog / CMS → reader
LMS → student
Health → patient
Developer product → the developer using your API

If it isn't obvious, the skill asks once.

Why a skill and not just a prompt

You could prompt Claude every turn with "describe this from the user's perspective." That works for one message. The skill adds four things you'd otherwise have to re-prompt for, every time:

The strip discipline — an enumerated list of code-words to remove (references/strip-list.md). This is what stops the view from leaking. Without it, "the API returns" sneaks back in within three turns.
Persistence — view on keeps the lens active for the whole conversation. No repeat-prompting.
Auto-trigger — explanation and feature-planning conversations get the lens by default, even when you don't think to ask.
Clean separation — when you need both views, the skill formats them as separate sections instead of blending. A blended description is the failure mode.

If you've ever read a "user story" that was secretly an architecture diagram, you know why this exists.

When NOT to use it

Stay in code-language when the question is:

Algorithmic (sorting, search, complexity, big-O)
Performance (memory, latency, profiling)
Internal infrastructure (CI, build pipelines, deploy, container orchestration)
Code style, refactoring, linting
Library or framework selection on technical merits
Debugging the user is doing themselves at the code level

For these, the right altitude is the code, not the product. Forcing a "user perspective" on a regex-performance question makes the answer worse.

Examples

See EXAMPLES.md for seven before/after pairs covering explanation, reframing, planning, mid-conversation drop-ins, a non-customer audience (a game player), the skill stepping out of the lens for a critical code-side detail, and a counter-example showing the skill correctly not activating.

Related skills

alirezarezvani/claude-skills — code-to-prd — generate a PRD document from a codebase
mattpocock/skills — zoom-out, grill-with-docs, and others; the closest stylistic neighbor
wondelai/skills — strategic product frameworks (JTBD, lean-startup, etc.)
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills — full PM workflow (discovery, RICE, OKRs, PRDs)
rohitg00/awesome-claude-code-toolkit — multi-perspective subagent reviews

Conceptual roots

The discipline isn't new. The skill borrows labels from places this instinct has lived before:

Outside-in — Dan North's framing of BDD: describe what's observable to the user before touching internals.
Fat marker sketch — Ryan Singer (Shape Up): draw at a resolution that physically prevents implementation detail.
Forcing function — Bryar & Carr (Working Backwards): write the press release first; the structure does the work.
Job story — Alan Klement's JTBD template ("When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]") deliberately has no implementation slot.
Feature factory / language hack — John Cutler: consciously substitute outcome words for output words.

product-view is none of these specifically. It's the small move all of them share.

Contributing

Two contribution types are most useful:

The view leaked. A prompt where the skill let code-language slip through. File via the view-leak issue template.
Activation misfire. The skill activated when it shouldn't, or didn't activate when it should. File via the activation issue template.

Details in CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT.