---
title: Half-remembered Mom Test — an agent skill turned fuzzy course notes into exact interview questions
date: 2026-08-04
tags: user-research, mom-test, agent-skills, founder, claude-code
type: success
reproducible: true
---

# Half-remembered Mom Test — an agent skill turned fuzzy course notes into exact interview questions

In plain words: most of what we learn on courses degrades into a vague feeling
of "there were rules about this." I found a way to stop guessing from that
feeling: have the agent load the actual expertise as a skill, and generate the
precise artifact my fuzzy memory could not.

I interviewed my first product tester and something nagged at me afterwards. A
startup-launching course I took had taught the "mom test" questions — I
remembered the shape of the rules (people politely agree with whatever you
pitch, so their agreement is worthless) but not the exact discipline. Reading
my own interview back, I had asked exactly the forbidden kind: "would you be
interested in…", "would you subscribe…" — hypotheticals that can only harvest
kindness.

So instead of guessing from memory, I asked my agent — which has a
form-and-research skill installed (form-cro, from the open marketing-skills
plugin), packaged expertise the way agents consume it. I only supplied the
clue — "there were mom's questions on that course" — and the agent matched it
to the right skill in its inventory. It scored my interview honestly (my two useful answers came from a
leading question answered "no", which is reliable precisely because saying no
costs politeness, and from an idea the tester volunteered unprompted). Then it
produced the exact crib sheet: walk me through what you did after install;
where did you stumble; when did you last hit this problem; what do you do
today instead; show me the artifact; would you forward this to a colleague —
the last one being the only positive signal that counts, because a real
forward costs something.

![The generated crib sheet — in the testers' language, as the method prescribes](/images/mom-test-crib-sheet.png)

The meta-lesson is the part I want to keep: my memory of the framework was
good enough to know a framework existed, and that is all it needs to be. The
agent's job is supplying the letter of the method; mine is knowing when to
reach for it.

## Reproduce this

Prerequisites: an agent that supports skills or plugins (Claude Code, or any
tool that consumes SKILL.md-format instructions).

Your agent will need from you: the clue — what you vaguely remember and from
where; what you are trying to do; and any raw material to score (a past
interview, a draft survey).

Steps:
1. First, have your agent check its own inventory: "list the skills you have
   installed related to <topic>" — agents know their skill list and must name
   a concrete match, not assume one.
2. If nothing matches, install the one this story used: the marketing-skills
   plugin from https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills (Claude Code:
   /plugin marketplace add coreyhaines31/marketingskills, then install; the
   relevant skill here is form-cro). Or search a skill directory such as
   skillsmp.com / claudeskills.info for an equivalent in your ecosystem.
3. If no skill exists for your method at all, fall back to the canonical
   source — for user interviews that is The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick — and
   have the agent apply the book's rules, citing them.
4. Tell the agent the feeling-shaped version of the rule you remember; ask it
   to first SCORE your existing attempt against the method (the gap between
   your memory and the letter is the useful output), then generate the
   precise artifact — questions, checklist, script — in the language your
   users speak.

Verify: your agent can name the exact skill or source it applied — if it
cannot cite one, it guessed from memory, which is the failure mode this whole
story is about. Then lint the generated questions: zero "would you / would
you like" hypotheticals, every question anchored to a specific past event or
an observable artifact, and one question that tests commitment rather than
opinion.