How to use the Principal-Agent Lens agent skill

What the skill makes the agent do

Once installed, the agent looks at career and partnership questions through the principal-agent idea. It walks through your current role, how tightly your pay is tied to the value you create, and whether partners' rewards line up with yours.

The skill is a thinking framework drawn from the book Navalmanack by Naval Ravikant, specifically the chapter on wealth and the principal-agent problem. It is not a tool that performs actions: it does not browse, edit files or contact anyone.

• Diagnoses whether you currently act as a principal (owner) or an agent (someone working for another's benefit)
• Checks how closely your reward is linked to the value you create
• Checks whether a partner's win condition matches yours
• Suggests structural changes such as equity, profit-sharing or clear responsibility

Install the principal-agent skill from a ZIP file

Download the ZIP for this skill from this page and unzip it. The folder contains SKILL.md, test-prompts.json and test-results.md. SKILL.md is the file that holds the skill's instructions.

For a personal install, place the unzipped skill folder in ~/.claude/skills/. For a single project, place it in that project's .claude/skills/ folder. Both locations are named in the source for this skill.

Alternatively, you can upload the skill in the Claude apps under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

• Personal install: ~/.claude/skills/
• Project install: the project's .claude/skills/ folder
• App install: Settings → Capabilities → Skills

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special command. Ask about a career or partnership choice in plain language. The skill's description lists trigger situations such as choosing between a big company and a small one, or asking whether to start your own business.

Strong trigger phrases from the source include questions about big companies versus small ones, how to make a team or partner care more, why no one takes responsibility for results, and who benefits from the work. Keywords like incentive, agent, owner, and ownership also match.

• "Should I join a big company or a small startup?"
• "How do I structure profit-sharing so my partner actually cares?"
• "Why do contractors keep cutting corners on our project?"
• "Am I working for my own benefit or someone else's?"

Examples of what you get back

Take the question of why a high-paid employee rarely builds wealth. The framework treats the employer as the principal who carries risk, responsibility and intellectual property, and the employee as an agent paid a minimum. The source's lesson is that a higher salary is still not wealth on its own.

For a partnership question, the skill asks you to check each collaborator's criterion for winning. If a partner's pay is fully disconnected from the value they create and cannot be changed, the skill treats that arrangement as high risk.

What the skill does not do

The skill says it gives structure, not wording. It is not useful for specific salary negotiation scripts, and it is not a guide to detailed organisational design or management tactics such as monitoring and performance reviews. Its guidance is that you should change the structure before turning to management methods.

The source also notes limits: the idea that small companies make everyone feel like an owner does not hold at large scale, and the principal-agent model cannot explain every organisational problem.

• Do not use it for salary negotiation wording
• Do not use it for detailed org chart or performance review design
• Expect it to be one lens among several

Safety notes: scripts and network access

The source lists this skill as requiring nothing, running no scripts, and using no network. It is a set of written instructions. Because it does not run code or make network calls, there are no scripts to review for this skill beyond reading SKILL.md itself.

Like any instructions you load into an agent, read SKILL.md before installing if you want to know exactly what guidance the agent will follow. The skill is licensed under MIT.

• Requires: nothing listed
• Runs scripts: no
• Uses network: no

Tips for getting useful results

Describe your actual situation with specifics: your role, how you are paid, and what you produce. The skill is built to diagnose your position, so concrete inputs produce more useful output than general questions.

Use the output as an input to a decision, not a verdict. The source suggests recording your diagnosis so you can compare it with future career or partnership choices.

• Give your current role, pay structure and the value you create
• For partnerships, name each partner and what they gain if they succeed
• Save the conclusion to compare against later decisions