free-tool-strategy

Trigger phrases

Phrases that activate this skill when typed to Claude Code:

• engineering as marketing
• free tool
• build a tool for leads
• ROI calculator
• grader tool

What it does

free-tool-strategy is a Claude Code skill from Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. It turns Claude into an engineering-as-marketing strategist who evaluates free-tool ideas against three filters: does the tool ride a real search query, does it produce a result a user wants to share, and does it lead naturally into the paid product? The skill activates when you mention “engineering as marketing”, “free tool”, “calculator”, “grader tool”, or “build a tool for leads”.

The output of a session is a tool brief: tool concept, target query and search volume hypothesis, MVP feature scope, lead-capture moment (gated result vs ungated + email opt-in), distribution plan, and the success metric that disqualifies it if it underperforms.

When to use it

Reach for it when:

• You have an engineering-light moment and want a marketing asset that compounds
• A specific high-intent query has no good free tool today and you have the data to build one
• Your category has obvious “audit / score / generate” formats and nobody owns them yet

When not to reach for it:

• You don’t have engineering capacity; tools require ongoing maintenance
• The tool would just be your product with steps removed — that’s a free trial, not a marketing asset

Install

The skill is distributed via Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. Install via the repo’s recommended path — copy the free-tool-strategy SKILL.md into your project’s .claude/skills/free-tool-strategy/ directory, or use the repo’s plugin install if you’ve set it up.

Once installed, the skill activates on the trigger phrases above. The first time it runs, it will check for .agents/product-marketing-context.md (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md) — populating that file with your product context first dramatically improves output quality across all of Haines’s marketing skills.

What a session looks like

A typical session has three phases:

1. Idea filtering. Three filters: search query exists, result is shareable, leads into the product. Most ideas die here, which is the point.
2. MVP scoping. What’s the smallest version that’s still genuinely useful? Where’s the lead-capture moment — is the result gated, or do we capture on email opt-in for “save your result”?
3. Distribution + metrics. Launch plan (Product Hunt, directories, content), embed strategy, success metric (organic traffic, signups attributed, link velocity).

The discipline that makes it work: a free tool that doesn’t ride a query and isn’t shareable is just an unfunded side project. The three filters kill 80% of ideas, including most of yours, and that’s correct.

Receipts

Honest reporting on what free-tool-strategy produces and where it has limits:

Where it works well:

• The three-filter test is brutally good at killing tools that would have flopped
• The lead-capture-moment design avoids both the over-gated tool (which kills traffic) and the unmonetized tool (which kills the business case)
• Distribution plan keeps you from launching to crickets

Where it backfires:

• It evaluates ideas, it doesn’t generate them — you need to bring the candidate list
• Building tools is genuinely engineering work; the skill can scope but not ship

Pattern that works: evaluate three candidate ideas in parallel and pick the one that scores highest across all three filters. Going deep on one mediocre idea wastes the engineering moment.

Source and attribution

Originally written by Corey Haines. The canonical SKILL.md and any supporting files live in the free-tool-strategy folder of his marketing-skills repository.

License: MIT. You can install, adapt, and redistribute the skill, with attribution preserved.

This page documents the skill from a practitioner’s perspective. For the formal spec and any updates, defer to the source repo.