jtbd-usability-testing

A self-contained Claude Code skill that runs persona-driven usability testing on any product — before you ship.

On-system ≠ usable. Your tests passing, pages rendering, and APIs returning 200s prove the system works. They don't prove a real person with a real job can actually get that job done. Real usability testing closes that gap — but it means recruiting users, scheduling sessions, and watching, so most teams skip it and ship on vibes.

This skill makes a first pass cheap. It establishes your product's Jobs-To-Be-Done, derives personas, then has the agent be those users against your running product — trying their real jobs, on the actual screens — and reports where the job breaks down, prioritized by impact, with screenshots.

It is not a replacement for testing with real humans. It's the pass you can run on every change to catch "a real person would be lost here" while it's still cheap to fix.

How it works

1. JTBD workflow (startup) — establish who the users are and what jobs they hire the product for (from your JTBD doc, or derived from the product itself).
2. Persona sessions — adopt each persona and attempt 3–6 of its real jobs against the running, logged-in app, staying in character.
3. Synthesis — a PM-style report: prioritized, evidence-backed recommendations, each tied to the job it unblocks.

No UI to test (an API / backend / CLI change)? It evaluates the change as the persona it most affects instead of forcing a browser session.

Principles

• Test the job, not the system — a task passes when the goal was accomplished.
• Be the user, don't tour the UI — take the path they'd take.
• Ground it in what changed — rank friction by the job it blocks.

Install

Clone straight into your Claude Code skills directory:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
git clone https://github.com/Swiftner/jtbd-usability-testing ~/.claude/skills/jtbd-usability-testing

Update later with git -C ~/.claude/skills/jtbd-usability-testing pull.

Use

Point Claude at a running app you're already logged into (local or hosted) and give it a focus:

"usability-test http://localhost:3000/onboarding as our users — focus on first-run."

You log in yourself in your own browser first; the skill drives that already-authenticated session and never handles credentials or takes irreversible actions. No UI to test? It also handles API/backend changes — see the skill's "When there's no UI to drive."