76 product management and engineering skills, distilled from the full archive of Lenny's Podcast and Lenny's Newsletter: 597 episodes and posts, 4,019 sourced insights, every quote verified verbatim against its source.
Curated by Refound AI. Browse the full database with guides, quotes, and templates at refoundai.com/lenny-skills.
- Organized as a product operating model — skills are grouped into the process areas a product org actually runs: strategy, planning, discovery, building, launch, growth, team, and operating cadence, plus vertical playbooks and a career track.
- Newsletter content included — 1.0 was podcast-only; 2.0 adds frameworks and templates from 349 newsletter posts, including the 'How X builds product' series.
- Templates & frameworks per skill — each skill ships with the named frameworks, checklists, and templates guests actually use, in
references/artifacts.md.
- Verified quotes — every quote is checked verbatim against the source transcript or post. No paraphrase drift.
Skills are markdown files that give AI agents specialized knowledge and workflows. Add them to your project and Claude Code (or any agent that reads SKILL.md files) applies the right frameworks when you work on a matching task.
Copy any skill folder into your project's .claude/skills/ directory:
git clone https://github.com/RefoundAI/lenny-skills.git
cp -R lenny-skills/skills/writing-prds .claude/skills/
Or grab individual skills with download links at refoundai.com/lenny-skills.
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| Roadmap Prioritization | Transform a chaotic backlog into a high-ROI strategic plan based on evidence and appetite. | 43 |
| Goal Setting and OKRs | Drive organizational focus by translating long-term strategy into ambitious measurable outcomes. | 19 |
| Planning Cadence Optimization | Align long-term strategy with short-term execution through structured, tiered planning rituals. | 13 |
| High Stakes Decision Making | Navigate irreversible choices and extreme uncertainty with speed and structural clarity. | 30 |
| Evaluating Trade-Offs | Master the art of weighing competing options to maximize long-term impact and team velocity. | 14 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| Writing Product Requirement Documents | Define clear problems and bounded solutions to maximize team velocity and creative output. | 14 |
| Shipping Velocity | Accelerate execution by removing organizational friction and establishing a high-intensity shipping culture. | 19 |
| AI-Assisted Prototyping | Transform abstract product concepts into functional, interactive software using natural language and AI tools. | 15 |
| Building With AI Agents | Transition from writing lines of code to directing a parallel team of autonomous agents. | 15 |
| Product Stack Strategy | Build a high-performance product toolkit by balancing established standards with AI-native speed. | 6 |
| Engineering Health and Productivity | Maintain high shipping velocity by balancing technical excellence with strategic developer investments. | 18 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| Product Launch Planning | Build momentum and drive adoption by turning product updates into remarkable market events. | 18 |
| PLG Sales Integration | Bridge the gap between self-serve adoption and enterprise deal-making to maximize revenue. | 13 |
| Mastering Enterprise Sales Motion | Transition from founder-led sales to a repeatable, scalable enterprise engine. | 16 |
| Acquiring First B2B Customers | Transition from zero to your first ten paying customers through manual hustle and high-trust relationships. | 7 |
| Marketing Org and Stack | Architect high-performing marketing organizations by aligning specialized talent with scalable data infrastructure. | 11 |
| Mastering PR and Press | Turn media coverage into a strategic engine for credibility, growth, and brand authority. | 9 |
| Naming and Branding | Build a distinctive identity that acts as a permanent competitive weapon and emotional anchor. | 11 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| Hiring World-Class Product Talent | Build a high-leverage product organization by sourcing, evaluating, and closing the top 1% of talent. | 30 |
| Interviewing and Evaluating Candidates | Move beyond resumes to assess high-fidelity signals like agency, first-principles thinking, and actual craft. | 48 |
| Organizational Design for Product and Engineering | Structure your teams to maximize autonomy, speed, and strategic alignment. | 60 |
| Building a Growth Team | Assemble and structure a high-impact team to scale distribution and optimize the user journey. | 14 |
| Founding Executive Team Building | Design and scale the core leadership layer that drives company growth from zero to one. | 15 |
| Coaching and Talent Development | Build a high-performing team by shifting from a problem-solver to a growth-accelerator. | 34 |
| Building High-Performing Team Culture | Establish a culture of ownership, transparency, and intensity to drive long-term product success. | 53 |
| Giving Effective Feedback | Transform difficult conversations into catalysts for growth and high performance. | 30 |
| Fixing Underperforming Teams | Diagnose the root cause of dysfunction and take decisive action to restore high performance. | 12 |
| Leading Organizational Change | Transform culture, structure, and operations without breaking the business. | 58 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| Marketplace Fundamentals | Build, bootstrap, and scale a self-sustaining ecosystem of buyers and sellers. | 7 |
| Supply Demand Balance | Master marketplace liquidity by identifying bottlenecks and strategically scaling the harder side of the market. | 6 |
| Marketplace Liquidity and Take Rates | Optimize the balance between transaction reliability and monetization to build a defensible ecosystem. | 6 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| AI Product Strategy | Prioritize high-impact workflows and navigate non-deterministic development to build defensible AI products. | 34 |
| AI Evaluation Strategy | Move beyond vibe checks to systematic, empirical measurement of AI product quality and reliability. | 11 |
| Designing AI-Native User Experiences | Transition from static interfaces to fluid, intent-driven interactions that leverage model intelligence. | 14 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| Evaluating Startup Ideas | Systematically validate problem-solution fit, market timing, and business viability before you build. | 28 |
| Startup Fundraising and Exits | Master the art of raising capital, managing investor relations, and navigating strategic acquisitions. | 16 |
| Founder-Led Sales | Master the art of personally selling your product to build trust and find product-market fit. | 6 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| PLG Fundamentals | Transform your product into the primary engine for distribution, activation, and expansion. | 9 |
| Skill | What it helps you do | Sources |
|---|
| Breaking Into Product Management | Strategically navigate the competitive path to your first product management role. | 11 |
| PM Career Growth | Transition from task-executor to high-impact product leader by mastering influence, ownership, and strategic foresight. | 99 |
| Navigating Career Transitions | Move beyond the default path by optimizing for high-growth environments and internal energy. | 56 |
| Building a Promotion Case | Turn your professional impact into a compelling, data-backed argument for your next career move. | 6 |
| Negotiating Tech Compensation | Master the art of benchmarking, intelligence gathering, and collaborative negotiation to maximize your total rewards. | 1 |
| Personal Brand Network | Transform your professional expertise into a magnetic network and a high-affinity audience. | 21 |
| Mastery of Public Speaking | Transform your technical expertise into compelling narratives that command authority and drive action. | 12 |
| Time and Energy Management | Protect your focus and fuel your performance by treating time and energy as strategic assets. | 46 |
| Founder Psychology and Resilience | Mastering the internal landscape to sustain high performance and navigate the emotional roller coaster of leadership. | 38 |
All insights, quotes, frameworks, and templates originate from Lenny Rachitsky's podcast and newsletter and remain his and his guests' intellectual property. Every skill links back to the source episodes and posts. If you find these useful, subscribe to Lenny's Newsletter.
Found a way to improve a skill? Open a PR. Please keep quotes verbatim and sourced.
MIT for the skill file structure and organization. Underlying content belongs to Lenny Rachitsky and podcast guests; used with attribution, free, and ungated.