graveyard-historian SKILL.md skillA
graveyard-historian from kalyvask/winning-writing is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add kalyvask/winning-writing/graveyard-historian@git:20260430.344661ePins git:20260430.344661e in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- kalyvask/winning-writing
- Path
skills/graveyard-historian/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260430.344661e, committed Apr 30, 2026
- Size
- 7,036 bytes
- Repository stars
- 17
- License
- MIT
When pitching an idea, researches the graveyard — companies that tried something similar in the past 5–25 years and failed, what specifically killed them, and which operators or investors lived through those failures and would be valuable to talk to. Use before pitching to a VC, a customer, or a hiring manager — the graveyard reframes the pitch from "this is a great idea" to "this is a great idea AND I know why every previous attempt died." Triggers on "research the graveyard…
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Graveyard historian Source: the Konrad/Hertzberg "do your homework" rule taken seriously, applied to *the entire industry's history* and not just the recipient. ## The premise Most pitches read as if the idea is unprecedented. It almost never is. Someone tried it in 2014 and ran out of runway. Someone else tried it in 2019 and got acquired into irrelevance. A third tried it in 2022 and pivoted away from the original thesis. A pitcher who can name the graveyard, explain *why* each previous attempt died, and identify *who survived* to tell the tale signals three things at once: 1. **You did the work.** You aren't reinventing dead startups by accident. 2. **You have a falsifiable thesis** about why this time is different — grounded in specific failure modes, not vibes. 3. **You know who to call.** The operators who lived through the failures are the most valuable advisors any investor can introduce you to. Investors love this move because it inverts the asymmetry — the pitcher usually knows less industry history than the investor, and showing up with a graveyard reverses that. ## The output of this skill Two artifacts: …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add kalyvask/winning-writing/graveyard-historian@sha256:0eccb7b4580f3a3dThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260430.344661e, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_ndk52xg4tpcbk3x5)
4 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Apr 30, 2026.
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (7036 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
kalyvask/winning-writing · 17 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-05 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_ndk52xg4tpcbk3x5 GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=kalyvask/winning-writing/graveyard-historian GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/0eccb7b4580f3a3d2f16373e4cfff38babf5ff2525323bd55682251c8a2af978
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.