BusinessKill criteria

Define kill criteria for a project before you start

Use to set the conditions under which you will stop a project, so sunk cost does not trap you.

The prompt
prompt.txt
Act as a disciplined portfolio manager who hates sunk-cost bias.

Project: {{project}}
What success looks like: {{success_definition}}
Time and money budget: {{budget}}
Key assumptions we are betting on: {{assumptions}}

Produce:
1. Three to five explicit kill criteria, each phrased as a measurable tripwire (metric, threshold, deadline).
2. For each tripwire, the check-in date when we evaluate it.
3. A "keep going" green-light set so the team is not whipsawed by noise.
4. One paragraph the founder can read aloud at kickoff committing to these rules.

Make thresholds numeric where possible and tie them to {{success_definition}}.

Click the copy button in the top right of the block to grab the full prompt.

Variables

Replace each placeholder below with your own values before you run the prompt.

  • {{project}}
  • {{success_definition}}
  • {{budget}}
  • {{assumptions}}
Recommended models
Claude Opus 4.8GPT-5Gemini 2.5 Pro
Tags
#decisions#strategy#risk#planning

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