eol-message

The EOL Message skill helps teams write a clear, empathetic end-of-life announcement when they retire a product, feature, or plan. It solves a recurring communication failure: sunset notices that are terse, business-centric, or vague create confusion, erode trust, and drive avoidable churn. This skill frames the discontinuation as progress while honestly acknowledging customer disruption and giving people a concrete path forward.

It provides a nine-part messaging framework covering company context, the announcement, a customer-benefit rationale, what the product was and who it served, customer impact, the transition or replacement solution, support measures, a specific timeline, and a call to action. It codifies why the structure works (empathy-first, clarity, support-focused, future-oriented) and calls out anti-patterns to avoid, such as terse shutdown notices, leading with cost savings, using "soon" instead of dates, or blaming customers for low usage. A fill-in template.md provides the full structure, and an examples file shows a complete, well-executed EOL announcement for a workflow-automation product with generous migration support and a nine-month timeline. The skill first gathers context (what is ending, replacement, timeline, impact, support plan, rationale) and declines to draft until a real transition plan exists.

It targets product managers, product marketers, and customer-success teams discontinuing a product, migrating customers off a legacy platform, sunsetting an acquired product, or deprecating an API. It is deliberately not for minor feature tweaks or for announcing changes before a support plan is ready.