advise-project-approach

advise-project-approach

A portable AI workflow that researches the best way to build your project before you commit to the wrong stack, vendor, or cost model.

You know that friend who has built fifteen projects, read every ADR ever written, and will tell you "actually, don't use Kafka for this" before you have even opened your editor?

This is that friend. As a skill-shaped workflow.

One-Line Install

npx skills@latest add AaravKashyap12/advise-project-approach --skill advise-project-approach

This uses the open skills installer to fetch the repo from GitHub and install only this skill. It requires Node.js/npm. Review installed skills before use; skills run with your agent's normal permissions.

What Changed in v0.3

v0.3 focuses on the thing generic AI stack advice often misses: real operating cost.

• Adds pricing and operating-cost analysis for managed services, hosting, storage, auth, AI APIs, observability, and lock-in.
• Treats "free to start" as a claim to verify, not a reason to recommend a vendor.
• Makes tradeoffs more blunt: what you gain, what you give up, what becomes harder later, and when the recommendation becomes wrong.
• Clarifies that the core workflow is vendor-agnostic: SKILL.md can be copied into any agent harness.
• Adds a pricing-focused example for Supabase-style recommendations.

What Changed in v0.2

Based on launch feedback, v0.2 makes the skill more rigorous and easier to judge:

• Adds a clear decision methodology: constraints -> comparables -> transferable patterns -> tradeoffs -> recommendation -> failure conditions.
• Treats comparable projects as evidence, not a popularity vote.
• Adds repo-size and token-budget rules for large codebases and monorepos.
• Requires the output to say what was inspected, sampled, skipped, and where the recommendation is provisional.
• Adds A/B examples showing where the skill should change generic AI advice.

Try These Prompts

"What's the best way to build a self-hosted bookmark manager?"
"Research comparable projects before I start this."
"I'm halfway through building a Node/Express API. Is my approach right?"
"Review my finished project at github.com/owner/repo."
"Should I use Postgres or SQLite for this?"
"What stack should I use given I know Python and want to self-host?"
"Should I use Supabase/Firebase/Neon/Vercel, or will pricing hurt later?"

What It Does

Drop it into your agent and it will:

• Pre-build: Research your stack, find comparable real projects, compare architecture options, and hand you a build plan before you commit to anything you will regret in month three.
• Mid-build: Inspect your repo, identify what is actually wrong, not just what is fashionable to fix, and give you a prioritized list of changes ordered by impact.
• Post-build: Review your finished project against mature comparables, call out the gaps, and tell you what to harden before you ship.

It does the research loop a good engineer would do manually: understand the goal, inspect the evidence, study credible comparables, evaluate the tradeoffs, and recommend the highest-leverage path.

No vibes. Evidence first.

Works Beyond Claude/Codex

The workflow is intentionally self-contained in:

skills/advise-project-approach/SKILL.md

The packaged .skill file and agents/openai.yaml are convenience metadata for compatible installers and UIs. A non-Claude or non-Codex harness can copy the SKILL.md instructions, adapt its own trigger/loading mechanism, and still use the same decision workflow.

Install

Recommended

npx skills@latest add AaravKashyap12/advise-project-approach --skill advise-project-approach

To list the skill without installing:

npx skills@latest add AaravKashyap12/advise-project-approach --list

Manual Download

Download the packaged skill:

dist/advise-project-approach.skill

Or install from the GitHub release:

v0.3.0 release asset

Skill UI

1. Download dist/advise-project-approach.skill.
2. Open your agent's skill settings.
3. Upload the .skill file.
4. Start a new conversation.

Local Skill Folder

If your agent supports local skill folders:

cp -r skills/advise-project-approach ~/.claude/skills/

For Codex-style local installs, copy or symlink skills/advise-project-approach into your supported skills directory.

Plugin Metadata

This repo also includes .claude-plugin/plugin.json for plugin-aware installers that can read skill collections from GitHub repositories.

Demo

You: I want to build a self-hosted bookmark manager. Solo dev, Python background, want tags and full-text search.