Principal-Agent Lens
Analyzes careers and partnerships through who benefits from the work, using Naval Ravikant's incentive ideas.
- Repository
- kangarooking/cangjie-skill
- Stars
- 11,998
- Licence
- MIT
- Files
- 3 files
What it does
Once installed, the agent frames career and partnership questions as a principal-agent problem: work done for your own benefit tends to be better than work done for someone else's. When you ask whether to join a big company or start your own, or how to structure a partner's incentives, 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. It is a thinking framework drawn from a book, not a tool that performs actions.
Great for
- People choosing between a large employer, a small company, or going independent
- Founders or managers designing equity, profit-sharing, or incentives for partners
- Anyone trying to understand why certain teams or contractors seem unmotivated
Skip it if
- Specific salary negotiation scripts; the skill says it gives structure, not wording, so it is not useful for that task
- Detailed organisational design or management tactics such as monitoring and performance reviews, which the skill says should be secondary to changing the structure
Try asking
- “Should I take a job at a big company or join an early-stage startup?”
- “How can I structure equity so my co-founder really cares about results?”
- “Why do the contractors on my project keep producing sloppy work?”
Install in 3 steps
- 1
Download the skill
The ZIP contains the 3 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.
principal-agent.zip - 2
Add it to your agent
Claude Code (all projects)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip principal-agent.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)
mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip principal-agent.zip -d .claude/skills/Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.
- 3
Ask for the task
No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.
Get better results
- Describe your concrete situation, such as the pay structure and who bears the risk, so the analysis is specific rather than generic.
- Expect a framework-based view drawn from one book's perspective; combine it with your own financial and legal advice before major decisions.
- Pair it with the related wealth-structure skill when the question involves personal assets as well as organisational incentives.
What's inside
- SKILL.md
- test-prompts.json
- test-results.md
Redistributed unmodified from kangarooking/cangjie-skill under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.