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Agent skill

Recovering From Failure

by RefoundAI in RefoundAI/lenny-skills

Help users navigate product failure by diagnosing root causes, evaluating conviction, and executing successful pivots or turnarounds based on proven industry frameworks.

MITAuto-check passedDevelopment

Install Recovering From Failure

skills CLI
$ npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill recovering-from-failure -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install RefoundAI/lenny-skills recovering-from-failure --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/recovering-from-failure .claude/skills/recovering-from-failure && 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
recovering-from-failure
GitHub stars
1.4k
Token cost
~2.1k tokens
SKILL.md length
1,328 words
Files
3 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
76
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Help users navigate product failure by diagnosing root causes, evaluating conviction, and executing successful pivots or turnarounds based on proven industry frameworks.

  • Works in 4 steps: Diagnose the failure - Use frameworks… → Assess conviction - Determine if the… → Identify the pivot path - Look for… → …
  • Tasks that involve Root cause analysis
  • 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

Recovering From Failure is an agent skill from RefoundAI/lenny-skills. Help users navigate product failure by diagnosing root causes, evaluating conviction, and executing successful pivots or turnarounds based on proven industry frameworks.

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 Development, covering Root cause analysis. 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 Root cause analysis

Example prompts

  • “/recovering-from-failure”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Diagnose the failure - Use frameworks like the Four Ps or root cause analysis to identify exactly why the product or feature isn't gaining…
  2. Assess conviction - Determine if the team still believes in the problem and solution after facing real world challenges or if it is time…
  3. Identify the pivot path - Look for organic pull within existing features or technical foundations to find a more viable direction.
  4. Execute with speed - Move decisively to abandon failing initiatives and reallocate resources toward high conviction opportunities.

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

Recovering From Failure loads about 2.1k tokens when it runs, and up to ~22k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 48 tokens; SKILL.md has 1,328 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~48
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
~22k

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). 1,328 words, ~2,120 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/recovering-from-failure/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 2 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
recovering-from-failure
description
Help users navigate product failure by diagnosing root causes, evaluating conviction, and executing successful pivots or turnarounds based on proven industry frameworks.

Recovering From Failure

Turn product setbacks and stalled growth into strategic breakthroughs and pivots.

Help the user with recovering from failure using insights from 20 guests and posts across Lenny's Podcast and Newsletter.

How to Help

  1. Diagnose the failure - Use frameworks like the Four Ps or root cause analysis to identify exactly why the product or feature isn't gaining traction.
  2. Assess conviction - Determine if the team still believes in the problem and solution after facing real world challenges or if it is time to move on.
  3. Identify the pivot path - Look for organic pull within existing features or technical foundations to find a more viable direction.
  4. Execute with speed - Move decisively to abandon failing initiatives and reallocate resources toward high conviction opportunities.

Core Principles

Stay in the game to reinvent

Bret Taylor: "They gave me another shot to do a V2 of it and I got the impression it wasn't like my last shot, but I certainly was feeling a little dejected from going from a hot shot, new PM to a new thing. So, we spent a lot of time thinking about how can you make something that's just much more compelling and not just a digital version of the Yellow Pages and not just so similar to some of the other products out there."

Rebuilding a reputation after a high profile failure requires the resilience to stay active and the willingness to completely reinvent the product.

Pivot toward domain expertise

Dalton Caldwell: "Usually a successful pivot gets warmer instead of colder from what you're an expert at and somehow builds on what you learned on the prior idea. Right? And so in the case of Brex, it was they had worked on a FinTech company in Brazil when they were younger, and so I'm like, 'You need to work more on the thing all about and not the thing nothing about.'"

A successful pivot leverages lessons or internal tools developed during previous attempts and moves you closer to your existing expertise.

Adopt a wartime mindset

Eoghan McCabe: "I said, we need to become a wartime company. If we don't fight for this, we are dead. I jumped hard on AI, but I also restarted the culture. I rewrote the values designed to be a sharp knife to cut out the parts of the company that I just knew wouldn't be effective."

Transitioning during a crisis requires aggressively eliminating legacy projects and cultural bloat to ensure survival over legacy processes.

Maintain fidelity to vision

Eric Ries: "People act like having a startup fail is the worst thing that can happen to you. And man, that's not even in the top 10. It's bad, I've done it, it's awful. It's really bad, but far worse is to be in a company that won't die, a zombie, undead company that you hate, but you can't leave."

Define a pivot as a change in strategy that maintains absolute fidelity to your original vision rather than losing your way.

Test your fundamental conviction

Scott Belsky: "I basically say, 'How much conviction do you have in the solution you're building?' I know in the beginning, before you knew all you know now, you had tons of conviction. Now knowing all you know, do you have more or less conviction in the problem and the solution you're building?"

The decision to persevere depends on whether your belief in the problem and solution has grown or diminished after facing real world challenges.

Evaluate the four key levers

Todd Jackson: "You've got the persona, the problem, the promise, and the product. Lattice kept the first one but changed the others. Vanta changed all four."

Analyze which element is failing by systematically checking the persona, the problem, the promise, and the product.

Kill profitable distractions

Varun Mohan: "Obviously that's a very big moment because that was a bet the company moment in the sense that we basically said, told our investors, 'Hey, we're making money on this.' We had already raised 28 million of capital and we were just like, 'Hey, we're just going to pivot entirely from this.' And we did that overnight."

Startups must be willing to kill even profitable business lines immediately if their foundational market assumptions are proven wrong.

Change the delivery model

Uri Levine: "We started that as a B2C and then we realized that this is way harder than we think it is, and we ended up with converting that into B2B, which turns out to be very successful for us. And so occasionally there are companies that you start your journey with one perception and you change that and that will happen multiple times."

Successful pivots often involve keeping the core problem while radically changing the delivery model to overcome adoption friction.

Show full SKILL.md (533 more words)Show less

Templates & Frameworks

  • Pivot Stories from Successful Companies (What to do if your product isn’t taking off) - Detailed first-person accounts of how Instagram, Loom, and Discord identified their pivot signals, plus a list of 10+ other famous pivots
  • Managing Founder Expectations — 7 Tactics for Driving a Pivot (This Week #7: Effectively communicating about a failure to execs, managing founder expectations, and hiring a Director of PM) - Tactics for convincing a founder or CEO to change direction when the core product idea isn't working
  • Four Strategies for Finding a Better Idea (The art of the pivot, part 2: How, why, and when to pivot) - Four proven paths to finding a pivot idea, derived from analysis of 40+ startup pivots. Three of the four are about noticing what's already working.
  • Startup Failure Warning Signs Checklist (Lessons learned from a startup that didn’t make it) - Warning signs derived from Cascade's experience that indicate a startup may be heading toward failure
  • Five Patterns of Successful Pivots (The art of the pivot, part 1: The definitive list of successful pivots) - Five empirically derived patterns from analyzing 30+ startup pivots, serving as a mental model for founders evaluating their own pivot.
  • Questions to Ask When Looking for a Pivot Idea (The art of the pivot, part 2: How, why, and when to pivot) - Diagnostic questions to identify pivot opportunities within your existing product or through exploration
  • Two Types of Pivots Framework (The art of the pivot, part 2: How, why, and when to pivot) - A classification system for understanding which type of pivot situation you're in, which determines your timeline and approach
  • Seven Options When Your Product Isn't Taking Off (What to do if your product isn’t taking off) - A sequential framework of seven actions a founder can take when their startup or product isn't gaining traction, roughly ordered from easiest to most drastic

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

Questions to Help Users

  • "Are you seeing genuine market pull or are you manually pushing every user into the product?"
  • "If you were starting your company today with the knowledge you have now, would you still build this product?"
  • "Is there a specific feature or internal tool that users are engaging with more than the primary offering?"
  • "Can you clearly articulate the granular implementation details of your current strategy?"
  • "Is your current retention data showing a persistent lukewarm interest where users consistently bounce?"
  • "Does the current technical foundation create more instability than value for your users?"

Common Mistakes to Flag

  • The Zombie Trap - Continuing to run a company that has lost its vision and no longer aligns with the founders' passion or market reality.
  • Copying the Status Quo - Building a digital copy of a legacy process rather than creating a differentiated experience that gives users a reason to switch.
  • The Sunk Cost Fallacy - Letting past effort or reputation prevent you from shutting down a product that is merely a novelty rather than a high pain solution.
  • Slow Pivoting - Stretching a strategic shift across multiple quarters instead of executing overnight to maintain focus and manage opportunity cost.

Deep Dive

For all 22 sourced insights from 20 guests, see references/guest-insights.md

  • Defining Product Strategy
  • Product Vision
  • Positioning
  • Pricing Strategy

© 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/recovering-from-failure of RefoundAI/lenny-skills.

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

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 13598cc

Compare with similar skills

Recovering From Failure 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.

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Recovering From Failure this skillRefoundAI/lenny-skills1.4k—~2.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
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Bug Finder for daisyUIsaadeghi/daisyui43k—~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Root Cause Debugginggarrytan/gstack136k—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Review PRapache/shardingsphere21k—~6.5kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Graph-Based Bug Tracingtirth8205/code-review-graph32k1 repos~287Automated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about Recovering From Failure

What does Recovering From Failure do?

Help users navigate product failure by diagnosing root causes, evaluating conviction, and executing successful pivots or turnarounds based on proven industry frameworks. Recovering From Failure is an agent skill from RefoundAI/lenny-skills. Help users navigate product failure by diagnosing root causes, evaluating conviction, and executing successful pivots or turnarounds based on proven industry frameworks.

When should I use Recovering From Failure?

Recovering From Failure fits situations like: tasks that involve Root cause analysis.

How do I install Recovering From Failure in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Recovering From Failure in Codex?

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

Can I use Recovering From Failure 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 recovering-from-failure -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/recovering-from-failure, .gemini/skills/recovering-from-failure, .github/skills/recovering-from-failure and .opencode/skills/recovering-from-failure in your project.

What does Recovering From Failure need to run?

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

Does Recovering From Failure 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 Recovering From Failure 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 Recovering From Failure use?

Recovering From Failure 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 Recovering From Failure use?

About 2.1k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 8.5k 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 20k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Recovering From Failure?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Recovering From Failure: OpenLogi macOS Permissions Triage (AprilNEA/OpenLogi, 23k stars), Bug Finder for daisyUI (saadeghi/daisyui, 43k stars), Root Cause Debugging (garrytan/gstack, 136k stars) and Review PR (apache/shardingsphere, 21k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Recovering From Failure?

RefoundAI (a GitHub organization) maintains it in RefoundAI/lenny-skills, which has 1,382 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.