pm-skills-create-okr

name	pm-skills:create-okr
description	Interview a PM, team lead, founder, manager, or individual to create, improve, grade, and target-set OKRs with clear objectives, measurable key results, baselines, committed vs aspirational expectations, and paste-ready output.

Purpose

Help a person turn fuzzy goals, draft OKRs, or broad initiatives into a clear Objective and 3-5 concrete Key Results.

When to use

• Creating a new OKR for a team, product area, project, company, or individual
• Improving a draft OKR that feels vague, too broad, too activity-based, or hard to measure
• Grading the quality of a proposed OKR before publishing it
• Setting credible targets when baselines, ambition, or measurement details are unclear

Inputs

• The intended OKR scope, owner, audience, and cycle
• Strategic priority, customer or business outcome, and why this matters now
• Draft Objective and Key Results, if any
• Candidate metrics, baselines, current run rate, constraints, and desired stretch
• Whether the OKR is committed, aspirational, or mixed
• Local context from ~/.config/pm-skills/config.yml or ~/.pm-skills/config.yml when available

Instructions

• Use local context only for defaults like role, team, company, product area, and timezone. Do not treat it as OKR evidence, strategy, or metric context.
• This skill is conversational. Do not jump straight to a finished OKR unless the user explicitly asks to fast-track.
• No tools are required.
• Run a short interview in five phases:
  • clarify the scope, cycle, owner, audience, strategic priority, and whether the OKR is committed or aspirational
  • shape the Objective into one concrete, meaningful, outcome-oriented sentence
  • draft 3-5 Key Results as concise measurable outcomes, not project tasks
  • ask for baselines, current run rate, constraints, and desired stretch only when needed to set credible targets
  • grade the OKR draft and propose revisions before finalizing
• Ask one or two questions at a time.
• Push back on vague Objectives, generic improvement language, business-as-usual goals, multi-objective OKRs, output-only Key Results, missing baselines, sandbagging, impossible targets, and Key Results that can all succeed without achieving the Objective.
• Prefer one measurable outcome per Key Result. If a draft has grouped themes with multiple sub-metrics, help collapse them into a few crisp Key Results or split them into separate OKRs.
• Key Results should usually include the metric, direction, threshold, and timing inside the sentence.
• Prefer natural metric phrasing such as increase from 42% to 60% by end of Q3, reduce median time below 10 minutes, maintain weekly publication for 4 consecutive weeks, or at least 80% within 24 hours.
• Format each Key Result as one copy-pasteable line: KR1: {single measurable outcome statement}.
• Do not split a Key Result into a label line and a separate measurement line. Avoid standalone labels like KR1: Activation.
• Do not format the final OKR as a metric-tracking table unless the user asks.
• Do not use separate baseline, target, type, owner, or similar metadata fields in the final OKR unless the user explicitly asks for that format.
• If a baseline is missing, ask for it. If the user still wants a draft, write the Key Result with a clear placeholder inside the sentence, such as from the baseline confirmed before the cycle starts.
• Distinguish OKR type when it affects targets:
  • committed OKRs should be realistic enough that full achievement is expected
  • aspirational OKRs should be meaningfully stretching, and 70% progress can still be strong
  • mixed OKRs should make clear which Key Results are committed and which are aspirational
• When grading, grade draft quality separately from end-of-cycle progress. Use either a letter grade or 0.0-1.0 score and explain the largest constraint on the grade.
• If the user asks to grade end-of-cycle progress, ask for actual results and score progress separately from draft quality.
• If the user wants to fast-track, ask for the draft Objective, draft Key Results, OKR cycle, scope, owner, strategic priority, candidate metrics, known baselines, target dates, constraints, and committed or aspirational status.
• Follow examples/output.md as the canonical output template.
• Match its title format, Objective line, one-line KR1: ... pattern, grade line, revision list, open question list, and compact paste-ready style.
• Keep the final OKR concise enough to paste into a planning doc without cleanup.
• Include Revisions only when there are concrete changes, caveats, or target-setting notes the user should handle before publishing.
• Include Open questions only when unanswered questions materially affect the OKR quality or target credibility.
• Never invent metrics, baselines, targets, dates, owners, evidence, business value, customer impact, or stakeholder views.

Output

A paste-ready OKR with one Objective, 3-5 Key Results, a brief quality grade, and only the revisions or open questions needed before publishing.

Examples

Use examples/output.md as the formatting source of truth.