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Agent skill

Defining Icp

by RefoundAI in RefoundAI/lenny-skills

Help users identify their most high-value customers by defining a hyper-specific ICP that maximizes product-market fit and acquisition efficiency.

MITAuto-check passedProduct & Project Management

Install Defining Icp

skills CLI
$ npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill defining-icp -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install RefoundAI/lenny-skills defining-icp --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/RefoundAI/lenny-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/defining-icp .claude/skills/defining-icp && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
defining-icp
GitHub stars
1.4k
Token cost
~2.1k tokens
SKILL.md length
1,296 words
Files
3 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
76
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Help users identify their most high-value customers by defining a hyper-specific ICP that maximizes product-market fit and acquisition efficiency.

  • Works in 4 steps: Identify the Narrowest Possible Segment… → Extract Key Attributes - Guide the user… → Validate Through Signal Quality - Use… → …
  • Tasks that involve Product strategy
  • SKILL.md covers How to Help, Core Principles, Templates & Frameworks and Questions to Help Users, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Defining Icp is an agent skill from RefoundAI/lenny-skills. Help users identify their most high-value customers by defining a hyper-specific ICP that maximizes product-market fit and acquisition efficiency.

Its SKILL.md is about 2.1k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 3 other files, including reference files (for example `references/artifacts.md` and `references/guest-insights.md`).

It sits in Product & Project Management, covering Product strategy. The repository describes itself as: 86 product management skills from Lenny's Podcast for Claude Code and AI agents. Hiring, user research, strategy, shipping, and more. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Product strategy

Example prompts

  • “/defining-icp”

Workflow steps

4 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Identify the Narrowest Possible Segment - Help the user strip away broad demographics to find a comically narrow beachhead where their…
  2. Extract Key Attributes - Guide the user to define three specific and unique characteristics that separate their ICP from the general market.
  3. Validate Through Signal Quality - Use cold outreach data and user behavior to confirm if the chosen segment feels acute pain and…
  4. Plan for Strategic Expansion - Determine when the current niche is dominated and outline the sequence for moving into adjacent segments.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 13598cc. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Defining Icp loads about 2.1k tokens when it runs, and up to ~20k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 40 tokens; SKILL.md has 1,296 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~40
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.1k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~20k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from RefoundAI/lenny-skills at commit 13598cc, republished under its MIT licence (© RefoundAI). 1,296 words, ~2,141 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/defining-icp/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 2 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
defining-icp
description
Help users identify their most high-value customers by defining a hyper-specific ICP that maximizes product-market fit and acquisition efficiency.

Defining Your ICP

Narrow your focus to win a market beachhead and build undeniable momentum.

Help the user with defining your icp using insights from 15 guests and posts across Lenny's Podcast and Newsletter.

How to Help

  1. Identify the Narrowest Possible Segment - Help the user strip away broad demographics to find a comically narrow beachhead where their solution is a 10x improvement.
  2. Extract Key Attributes - Guide the user to define three specific and unique characteristics that separate their ICP from the general market.
  3. Validate Through Signal Quality - Use cold outreach data and user behavior to confirm if the chosen segment feels acute pain and demonstrates urgency.
  4. Plan for Strategic Expansion - Determine when the current niche is dominated and outline the sequence for moving into adjacent segments.

Core Principles

Dominate the niche to gain power

Geoffrey Moore: "The tendency when you're in the chasm is, 'I just need more customers. I should take any customer I could find,' because we need revenue. It's like taking a match and running it back and forth under a log. It's not going to light the log. So how do you start a fire? Well, you start it by putting a little kindling, little crumpled up paper, and you hold the match in one place until the fire starts."

Target a segment where you can realistically achieve 30% to 50% market share within two years. Resisting the urge to pursue every customer for revenue is essential to build ecosystem power.

Optimize via high-signal attributes

Jeanne Grosser: "And what this was was effectively a company universe. So you can think of this as a massive database. Every row was a different company on the planet and every column was an attribute about that company that would help you sell to them in a more targeted fashion."

Identify key business attributes, such as industry or business model, that signal a high need for your specific product. Build a database that segments the market based on these correlations.

Align with your natural audience

Lulu Cheng Meservey: "There's going to be people who are just not your natural audience, and you should know that and not waste your time. But if your natural audience cares about X and you're offering Y, then it's your job to create the API or to create the bridge from X to Y."

Focus limited resources on audiences that already have pre-existing interests aligned with your mission. Dedicate time to understanding their specific passion points and ignore misaligned groups.

Avoid the bad audience trap

From "How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)": "If you’ve got a killer idea but you’re talking to the wrong people, you’ll come away thinking your idea stinks, and give up. But the same idea pitched to different people can change everything."

Targeting the wrong audience can lead you to abandon great ideas prematurely. Select at least three specific and unique attributes to ensure you are not mistaking poor audience fit for a bad product.

Ensure acquisition uniformity

From "Lessons learned from a startup that didn’t make it": "Simply put, an ICP must be a single market segment: a group of people for whom the value of solving a problem is roughly the same, and who can be reached in roughly the same way. “People who use Excel” is not a market segment, because it says nothing about either the value of their problem or how to reach them."

A specific and actionable ICP must define a single market segment where both the solution's value and the method of reaching the customer are uniform. If you cannot reach them consistently, it is not a valid segment.

Prioritize cold outbound signals

From "How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)": "Data from outbound sales is the best signal for what’s working, versus leads from investors and friends."

Cold outreach response rates provide the most objective validation of an ICP because they lack the social bias inherent in warm introductions. Discount enthusiasm from friends or investors in favor of raw data.

Show full SKILL.md (622 more words)Show less

Templates & Frameworks

  • Initial ICPs of 15+ Major B2B Companies (How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)) - A reference chart and detailed stories showing exactly how successful B2B companies defined their initial ICP, including the specific attributes they chose.
  • 9-Step Process to Identify Your ICP (How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)) - A step-by-step checklist summarizing the entire ICP identification process from the newsletter.
  • Super-Specific Who Template (B2C GTM Template) (How to kickstart and scale a consumer business—Step 2: Identify your super-specific who) - A fill-in-the-blank template to define your ideal early adopter by six attributes, aimed at helping founders consolidate their audience definition. Linked as a
  • Four Signs You've Found Your ICP (How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)) - A framework of four observable signals that indicate you're converging on the right ideal customer profile.
  • ICP Specificity Test (Lessons learned from a startup that didn’t make it) - A framework for evaluating whether your ICP is specific enough, based on two criteria: the value of solving the problem is roughly the same across the segment,
  • B2B Segmentation and Persona Layering Model (Summary: April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process) - Framework for distinguishing between market segmentation and buyer personas in B2B, and how they work together
  • High-Expectation Customer (HXC) (How to kickstart and scale a consumer business—Step 2: Identify your super-specific who) - Julie Supan's framework for identifying the most discerning person in your target demographic whose expectations, if exceeded, mean you'll meet everyone else's.
  • 9 ICP Attribute Categories (How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)) - A comprehensive list of the 9 dimensions along which you can define your ideal customer profile, with examples for each.
  • ICP Definition Template (Google Sheets) (How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)) - A spreadsheet template for defining your ideal customer profile by picking the 3 most unique and important characteristics from 9 possible attribute categories.
  • How to Choose Between VSB and SMB as Your Initial Target (GTM motions of 30 B2B SaaS companies) - Three criteria for deciding whether to target very small businesses or small/midsize businesses as your initial market segment

See references/artifacts.md for the full list with details.

Questions to Help Users

  • "Can you describe three real people you know who would be exceptionally excited about what you are building today?"
  • "What is the specific struggling moment or event that triggers your ideal customer to start looking for a solution?"
  • "If you had to pick a segment so narrow that outsiders would find it comical, who would that be?"
  • "What are three unique attributes (demographic, firmographic, or psychographic) that your best users all share?"
  • "How does your solution provide a 3x or 10x improvement over the current status quo for this specific group?"
  • "How exactly will you reach these customers in a way that is uniform across the entire segment?"

Common Mistakes to Flag

  • Mistaking revenue for ICP fit - Chasing every customer who is willing to pay can lead to a fragmented product roadmap and poor long-term retention.
  • Targeting a broad persona instead of a market segment - Personas like busy moms are too vague to inform specific acquisition channels or product features.
  • Relying on warm introductions for validation - Friends and network contacts often give polite but biased feedback that masks a lack of true product-market fit.
  • Starting with VSBs instead of SMBs - Very small businesses often have high churn rates due to business failure rather than product quality, making it harder to find growth signal.
  • Expanding to new segments too early - Moving into adjacent markets before dominating the first one dilutes resources and weakens the core value proposition.

Deep Dive

For all 28 sourced insights from 15 guests, see references/guest-insights.md

  • Customer Interviews
  • Continuous Discovery
  • Idea Validation
  • Product Experiments

© RefoundAI, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 2 other files (references) in skills/defining-icp of RefoundAI/lenny-skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • references/artifacts.md
  • references/guest-insights.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 13598cc

Compare with similar skills

Defining Icp next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Defining Icp compared with similar skills
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Organic Growth Path Advisordeanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills7.2k2 repos~5.2kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Product Strategistalirezarezvani/claude-skills28k2 repos~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
PlaidBuildGreatProducts/plaid218—~1.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Product Competitive AnalysisFokkyp/claude-skills226—~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassNone

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Categories

Questions about Defining Icp

What does Defining Icp do?

Help users identify their most high-value customers by defining a hyper-specific ICP that maximizes product-market fit and acquisition efficiency. Defining Icp is an agent skill from RefoundAI/lenny-skills. Help users identify their most high-value customers by defining a hyper-specific ICP that maximizes product-market fit and acquisition efficiency.

When should I use Defining Icp?

Defining Icp fits situations like: tasks that involve Product strategy.

How do I install Defining Icp in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill defining-icp -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/defining-icp in RefoundAI/lenny-skills) into .claude/skills/defining-icp in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Defining Icp in Codex?

Run `npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill defining-icp -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/defining-icp in RefoundAI/lenny-skills) into .agents/skills/defining-icp in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Defining Icp in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill defining-icp -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/defining-icp, .gemini/skills/defining-icp, .github/skills/defining-icp and .opencode/skills/defining-icp in your project.

What does Defining Icp need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Defining Icp is instructions for the agent only.

Does Defining Icp access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Defining Icp safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Defining Icp use?

Defining Icp is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Defining Icp use?

About 2.1k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 8.6k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 17k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Defining Icp?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Defining Icp: Game Changing Features (openstatusHQ/data-table-filters, 2.3k stars), Organic Growth Path Advisor (deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills, 7.2k stars), Product Strategist (alirezarezvani/claude-skills, 28k stars) and Plaid (BuildGreatProducts/plaid, 218 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Defining Icp?

RefoundAI (a GitHub organization) maintains it in RefoundAI/lenny-skills, which has 1,381 GitHub stars. The repository holds 76 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on July 16, 2026.

Source: RefoundAI/lenny-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.