HBS Case Writer

A Claude Code skill for writing Harvard Business School-style teaching cases on financial market events and investment decisions.

What It Does

Transforms real-world financial events into immersive, decision-focused teaching cases following HBS conventions:

• Narrative structure — Opens at the decision moment with a named protagonist
• Objective tone — Third-person, present tense, journalistic style
• Unresolved ending — Ends with open questions, never conclusions
• Data-driven exhibits — Professional tables and charts with proper sourcing

When to Use

Invoke this skill when you want to:

• Write a teaching case about a financial market event
• Create an HBS-style case on an investment product or decision
• Develop instructional materials for finance courses

Triggers: “Write an HBS case about X”, “Create a teaching case on Y”, “Develop a case study for Z”

Installation

The skill is a directory (hbs-case-writer/) containing SKILL.md plus supporting scripts, references, assets, and a paired agent. To install into another Claude Code project, copy the whole directory into that project’s skills folder:

cp -r hbs-case-writer/ /.claude/skills/

For the review-and-revise loop to work, also copy the paired case-reviewer agent into the project’s agents folder (Claude Code discovers agents under .claude/agents/, not inside the skill):

mkdir -p /.claude/agents/
cp hbs-case-writer/agents/case-reviewer.md /.claude/agents/

Usage

/hbs-case-writer Write an HBS case about the SVB collapse

Or simply describe the event:

Create a teaching case on spot Bitcoin ETFs

Skill Structure

hbs-case-writer/
├── SKILL.md                      # Main skill instructions
├── scripts/
│   └── case_plots.py            # Figure generation (matplotlib)
├── references/
│   ├── hbs-patterns.md          # Detailed patterns from real HBS cases
│   ├── financial-data-sources.md # Where to find financial data
│   └── case-review-rubric.md    # Scoring rubric for the case-reviewer agent
├── assets/
│   ├── case-template.md         # Ready-to-use case (Markdown) template
│   └── slide-template.tex       # Beamer teaching-deck template (no-dependency theme)
├── agents/
│   └── case-reviewer.md         # Paired critic agent (install under .claude/agents/)
└── examples/
    └── spacex-ipo/              # Sample slide deck (PDF + tex) with figures

The case-reviewer agent ships inside the skill folder for distribution, but Claude Code only discovers agents under .claude/agents/. Copy it there during installation (see above). It is a critic only — it never edits the case.

Output

The case is authored in Markdown as the single source of truth, then rendered into the formats the user requests:

1. Word document (.docx) — primary deliverable, via pandoc (or the md-to-docx / docx skills)
2. Figures — professional publication-quality charts (PNG, 300 DPI)
3. Beamer teaching slides (.tex → .pdf) — optional companion deck, from the same material
4. Teaching note (optional) — learning objectives, discussion questions, teaching plan

Always confirm with the user which outputs they want before generating (Word is the default; Beamer is opt-in).

Review & Revise Loop

Every drafted case goes through a review pass before it is final:

• The case-reviewer agent critiques the case and verifies facts/references against primary sources via web search
• It also checks decision-relevant coverage: every material segment from the primary filing appears, valuation cases carry a real analytical framework (build/comps/lever/sensitivity, not just headline multiples), and use-of-proceeds, TAM, key-person pay, and share-count basis are faithfully represented
• It produces a scored report (start at 100, deductions per case-review-rubric.md) and a required-revisions list
• The writer applies the fixes; max two review-revise rounds before escalating to the user
• Separation of powers: the reviewer only critiques — it never edits the case

Figure Generation

Generate professional figures for your case:

python scripts/case_plots.py

Available Plot Types

Examples

• SVB_Case.pdf — the Silicon Valley Bank collapse case (full PDF, generated by this skill)
• examples/spacex-ipo/ — SpaceX IPO flip-or-hold case; includes the Beamer slide deck (PDF + LaTeX source) and exhibit figures

The full case folders (Markdown source, Word doc, teaching note) live locally in the author’s Case bank/ and are not shipped in this repo.

Key Principles

Data Sources

The skill uses:

• Market data — Yahoo Finance, FRED, Bloomberg
• Company data — SEC EDGAR filings, earnings calls
• News — WSJ, FT, CNBC, Bloomberg
• Academic — SSRN, NBER working papers

License

MIT