eol-process skill

EOL Process

Purpose

Run a product retirement end to end: decide whether to do it, align the people who can stop it, build the operational plan, ready the teams who will face customers, announce it, and close it out properly. Six phases with decision points between them.

The governing goal, and the sentence worth keeping in your head the whole way through: lose the product without losing the customer. Most of what follows exists to protect the second half of that sentence.

This is an orchestration skill. It doesn't replace the artifact skills — it tells you which one to reach for, when, and what has to be true before you move on.

Input

Works best with: The product being retired and where you currently are — considering it, decided, mid-plan, or already announced and struggling.

Also useful: Scale (customers, revenue, contracts), whether a replacement exists, and who already knows.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The process opens by establishing what's being retired and where you are in it, then routes you to the right phase. If you're mid-sunset and something is going wrong, say so — the diagnostic in "Entering Mid-Stream" finds the skipped phase.

Example invocations:

• Run the full EOL process for our legacy reporting module — decision made, nothing else started.
• We announced a sunset three weeks ago and Support is drowning. What did we skip?

Key Concepts

The Six Phases

Phase 6 is the one everyone skips. It's also the phase that makes your next sunset cheaper. Budget for it up front, because nobody volunteers for it afterward.

This Is a Route, Not a Pipeline

Every skill in this suite stands alone. None requires another to have run first. This process is a recommended route through independent stops, not a conveyor belt — which means:

into a single afternoon.

• You can enter at any phase. Decision already made and defensible? Start at Phase 2.
• You can skip phases when the level justifies it. A Level 1 sunset often collapses 2 through 4

Legal finding or a Sales commitment can invalidate the decision. That's the process working, not failing.

• You can go backwards, and sometimes must. Phase 2 routinely sends you back to Phase 1 — a

"Level 2" and pasting what you have. There's no schema to preserve.

• Nothing hands off a format. Carrying context between phases means telling the next skill

The order earns its keep because each phase surfaces what the next one needs. Deviate deliberately, not accidentally.

Right-Size the Whole Process

Not all EOLs play out the same. The process compresses or expands with the sunset:

Level 2 is the default. Set the level in Phase 1, and let it size everything downstream. Never default to Level 3 — process theater on a small sunset teaches everyone to ignore the process on a big one.

Entering Mid-Stream

Most people find this skill in the middle of a sunset, often a troubled one. Symptoms map to the phase that got skipped:

Facilitation Source of Truth

Use workshop-facilitation as the interaction protocol when running any phase conversationally. Give the heads-up, take context dumps, offer numbered choices, and let people bail to a specific phase.

Anti-Patterns (what this is NOT)

prevent.

• Not a project plan. It sequences decisions and artifacts, not tasks and resources.
• Not mandatory in full. Six phases at Level 1 is the ceremony failure this suite exists to

• Not a substitute for the conversations. Phase 2 is people talking, not a document.
• Not one-directional. Going back to Phase 1 is a success condition, not a rollback.

Application

Use template.md as the one-page tracker for a sunset in flight.

This workflow orchestrates 6 phases with a decision point after each. Elapsed time runs from days at Level 1 to two years at Level 3 — set the level in Phase 1 and let it size the rest. Each phase names the skill that produces its artifact, but every one of those skills also runs standalone, so enter wherever you actually are.

Phase 1: Decide

Question: Should we retire this, and how big is this?

Activities

The trigger predicts the failure mode.

1. Name the trigger honestly — a metric, a strategy shift, a cost complaint, or an exec remark.

an obligation lock or a missing landing place can outweigh all of them.

1. Assess retire signals against hold signals. Two or more strong retire signals is a real case;

every phase that follows.

1. Set the intensity level. Recommend from blast radius, then choose deliberately. This sizes

1. Confirm the landing place: replacement, migration, or graceful exit — and whether it's ready.

Run eol-readiness-advisor for this phase.

Outputs

• A verdict: Go, Go-with-conditions, Hold, or Harvest
• An intensity level (1, 2, or 3)
• A named landing place with a readiness status
• A list of obligations to check before announcing

Decision Point 1: Is this a Go, and is the landing place real?

price change, a bug fix) satisfies the actual need

• Go → proceed to Phase 2
• Go-with-conditions → proceed to Phase 2, carrying the condition as a gate on Phase 5
• Hold → stop. Set a revisit trigger. Consider whether a cheaper move (End of Sale only, a

• Harvest → stop the investment, not the product. Set a review date

If the landing place isn't ready, you may proceed through Phases 2-4 but not Phase 5. Do not announce a transition you can't yet support.

Phase 2: Align

Question: Who can stop this, and what do they know that we don't?

Activities

Support — filtered by level, plus Executives, Channel, and Regulatory at Level 3.