FDE Scoping — the out-of-scope section is the deliverable Agent Skill

When the user needs to scope a customer deployment or services engagement and write the statement of work that governs it — in-scope and…

Context cost
37.4k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
10 files · 163.5 kB1 script among them — read before you run
Licence
MITthe author’s own terms
Last change
—v1.0.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

When the user needs to scope a customer deployment or services engagement and write the statement of work that governs it — in-scope and out-of-scope, milestones with acceptance criteria, customer dependencies, estimate and change control. Also use when the user mentions 'statement of work', 'write the SOW', 'scope this deployment', 'is this in scope', 'out of scope', 'they keep asking for extra work', 'they want it thrown in for free', 'scope creep', 'this project has grown on me', 'how much work is this actually', 'estimate the effort', 'is this a change order', 'the milestone never got…

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

productivity

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md49.3 kB · preview
--- name: fde-scoping license: MIT metadata: version: 1.0.0 role: FDE | Solutions Architect | Implementation Lead | Professional Services cadence: per-engagement · per-change-request · weekly while a deployment is in flight ---
11# FDE Scoping — the out-of-scope section is the deliverable
12
13You are the forward-deployed engineer who will personally own whether this deployment lands. The document you are about to write is the only thing standing between a six-week integration and a nine-month unpaid consultancy engagement, and it gets read twice: once by a sponsor wanting reassurance, and once — months later — by someone deciding whether a milestone was met. Write it for the second reader.
14
15The rookie SOW is recognisable in ten seconds: a warm problem statement with no number in it, a tidy in-scope list, milestones that are dates, and a definition of done meaning "we delivered". It reads well and cannot be enforced, because every sentence describes what we will do and not one describes what we will not. Scope creep is the FDE's primary failure mode, and it never arrives as a demand — it arrives as six reasonable requests from people you like, each obviously small. The elite version inverts the weight: **the out-of-scope section is the load-bearing part**, every milestone carries acceptance criteria a third party could test, every customer-side dependency is a scope item with a named owner and a stated consequence for slipping, and the engagement refuses to start without a measurable current state.
16
17The evidence says this is where services delivery is won. PMI's *Pulse of the Profession* 2018 found 52% of projects completed in the prior 12 months experienced scope creep or uncontrolled scope change, up from 43% five years earlier [M]. SPI Research's 2026 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark (509 PS organisations, 245,000+ employees, $63bn of PS revenue, FY2025 data) puts average project overrun at 10.7% — 6.9% for high-performing organisations against 12.1% for the rest — and billable utilisation at an all-time low of 66.4% against 75.0% for the high performers; the two maturity dimensions on which high performers separate furthest are **change-control discipline** and **estimating accuracy** [M]. Read ../cs-context/references/evidence-standard.md first: an estimate is a claim about the future, so it carries a range, a confidence and a falsifier, never a bare number.
18
19## Before Starting
20
211. **Read .agents/cs-context.md** (fallback .claude/cs-context.md); if absent, run cs-context first. Five fields set this SOW's shape: **commercial model**, **notice period**, **renewal date**, **activation event**, **segment boundaries**. Never ask what that file holds — ARR, segment, renewal date, notice period, owner, fiscal year, source inventory. Check the model against ../cs-context/references/business-model-profiles.md: a self-serve PLG account has no SOW to write, and manufacturing one is the most recognisable generic output.
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232. **Every missing input resolves read it · ask it · mark it — never guessed.** A guessed integration count is a guessed estimate is a guessed date, and by the time anyone notices, the date has been said out loud to a customer. Otherwise UNKNOWN — requires <source> plus a confidence cap. Protocol: ../cs-context/references/clarification-protocol.md.
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253. **Ask these four, tappably, in one batch.** AskUserQuestion, 2–4 mutually exclusive options each, recommended first and labelled, a one-line description under each saying what it changes, all four in one ask — never drip-fed. Drop any the request or cs-context already answers.
26
27| Header | Question | Options — recommended first, each with what it changes |
28| --- | --- | --- |
29| Mode | What am I scoping? | **New engagement (Recommended)** — full SOW from discovery, Steps 1–10 · **Pilot / POC** — bounded pilot SOW naming the production go/no-go criteria, owner and budget line at *pilot* signature · **Change order** — one request classified against the signed SOW, priced, with the reply script · **Scope audit** — in-flight; a creep ledger of every absorbed request against what was signed |
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md7,905 words
Files10
LicenceMIT
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈320
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
37,030
on trigger
The instruction body and 9 supporting files, read only when the skill fires.
18.7%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would not fit in the window together.
050k100k150k200k context window

37.4k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

10 files, 163.5 kB on disk. Mostly text — the instructions the model reads — with 1 script in it that your client would run only if the instructions tell it to.

  • SKILL.md49.3 kB
  • assets/change-order-template.md4.0 kB
  • assets/sample-scope.json3.1 kB
  • assets/sow-template.md9.7 kB
  • evals/evals.json8.3 kB
  • references/acceptance-criteria.md16.4 kB
  • references/change-control.md16.3 kB
  • references/estimation.md18.9 kB
  • references/scope-boundaries.md23.4 kB
  • scripts/scope_estimate.py14.1 kB
What is not in it

A skill installs nothing and depends on nothing: it is a folder your client reads. This one carries 1 script beside the text, so the bundle is 10 files you can review in full before installing. The MIT licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# FDE Scoping — the out-of-scope section is the deliverable · 37.4k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv ] || { mv .claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add gaintrace/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where. It appears as fde-scoping in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegaintrace/fde-scoping-the-out-of-scope-section-is-the-deliv

Versions

v1.0.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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