View All guides Conversation skill · updated 2026-09-21
Maryland SBDC Toolkit

Skill guide

Success Story Writer

Turn a client win into a success story, then a press release, blog post, LinkedIn post, or legislative letter.

For: Maryland SBDC consultants and staff
Maintainer: Brandon Mason
Source: the skill’s own instructions
What you getWhat you useSetupHow to useFAQ

Start here

What you get

▶ Watch the walkthrough: what you do, and what the skill does for you

Upload the client's Neoserra report, paste a few lines, or say START for a guided walkthrough. It extracts what it can, confirms the facts with you, drafts the story, and then offers a lettered menu of follow-ups: press release, blog post, LinkedIn post, legislative letter, one "chaotic good" idea and one "high value, minimum effort" pick.

The legislative letter option looks up the client's representatives, researches the officeholder's priorities, and drafts the letter from the client — framed as evidence the official's own agenda is working.

Conversation skill. You start it by saying what you want; it asks for what it needs and hands back a deliverable in the same chat. Nothing to install beyond the plugin, nothing to configure.

What it never does

  • Never includes exact dollar amounts — "received an SBA loan," not the figure.
  • Never uses the banned-word list (the tired press-release vocabulary); the voice stays plain and specific.
  • Never publishes or posts anything. Every deliverable is a draft for you and the client to approve.

Step 1

What to have ready

Step 2

Setting it up

Getting it on your side

The skill is plain instructions, so it runs wherever you already work. Pick your row:

  1. Get the files: everything is in the public GitHub repository — the skills themselves, and the ready-to-install plugin file on the latest release. MIT licensed; no GitHub account needed to download.
  2. Claude desktop app: download sbdc-toolkit.plugin from the latest release, drag it into a chat, click Accept.
  3. ChatGPT: this skill is a plain Markdown file, not Claude-specific. Open skills/sbdc-success-story/SKILL.md, copy the whole file, and paste it into a ChatGPT Project’s instructions or a custom GPT. Same instructions, same outputs.
  4. Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add bwfnx/sbdc-toolkit then /plugin install sbdc-toolkit@maryland-sbdc

Your first conversation

Open a new chat and say:

START

It will ask for:

  • In the walkthrough: who the client is, what they came in with, what changed, what they'd say in their own words. Upload a report and it skips the interview.

Step 3

How to use it

Say

Help me write up this client win.I need a success story for this Neoserra report.Draft a legislative letter about this client for their delegate.Give me a LinkedIn post from this story.

What comes back

  • The success story in the standard structure (challenge, SBDC help, outcome, quote).
  • A follow-up menu lettered A–F: Press Release, Blog Post, LinkedIn Post, Legislative Letter, [Chaotic Good], [High Value, Min Effort].

Then

  • Pick a letter. The legislative letter walks four steps: look up representatives, research the officeholder, draft from the client, present and advance.
  • Send the draft to the client for approval before it goes anywhere.

Tips from the field

  • A specific client quote, even one sentence, does more than any statistic — get it before you start.

Questions people ask

FAQ

Can it use the client's revenue numbers?
It will describe growth but will not print exact figures; that rule is in the skill.
Is it safe to paste client details?
Paste only what the deliverable needs. Nothing you paste is stored by the skill, but the chat itself is a record — treat it like any other working document.
It did something odd. Who do I ask?
Brandon Mason. Say which skill and what you said to start it; a screenshot of the reply helps.