PumaSkills

What's new

Record a level for each person against each competency, and compare it to what their role requires. Every view is that one comparison, cut a different way.

It looks for the person who cannot go on holiday — the Overview leads with what nobody can do and what only one person can. A team average hides both; single points of failure are what actually take you down.
Coverage by shift, not by headcount — whether each shift can handle its work unaided, which is a different question from whether the team as a whole could.
Gaps carry a decision — develop, hire, contract or accept, recorded against the gap. A shortfall with no decision on it defaults to next year's budget, silently.
A requisition writes itself — turn a gap into a job spec plus an interview scorecard weighted toward exactly what you are missing, rather than a generic list of nice-to-haves.
The scale locks when you start — every rating is an integer on it, so it cannot change underneath an assessment. Changing scale means a new assessment, on purpose.
Re-assessment shows movement — compare two snapshots to see gaps closed and opened and where bench depth changed. Joiners and leavers are labelled rather than scored, so churn does not read as improvement.
It behaves like a personnel record — per-person "informed on" dates, and a purpose, accountable owner and delete-by date per assessment. This is data about people, and the app treats it that way.
Assessments never mix — separate workspace tabs share nothing, so a client's data cannot leak into yours.

See the Method tab for how to run one, and Keyboard for every shortcut.

Competency assessment goes wrong in predictable ways. Seven rules that avoid most of it.

Fix the scale first. The app makes you — it is set when an assessment starts and cannot be changed, because every rating is an integer on it. A different scale means a new assessment.
Require levels per role. A gap is "below what this role needs", not "below the top". Requiring the top rung everywhere produces a red matrix that says nothing.
Rate against evidence. Self-assessment is unreliable in both directions: the strongest under-rate, the least experienced over-rate.
Discount stale capability. Forensics, on-call command and packet analysis all decay within a year of disuse.
Look for depth, not average. What can nobody do, and what can only one person do. The second one takes holidays.
Close gaps in cost order — develop, hire, contract, accept — and record which, or it defaults to next year's budget.
Re-assess on a cadence. Comparing two snapshots is the only evidence the training moved anything.

The default scale. Level 2 is the bar most shift work actually needs, and a new assessment starts there — each of the other scales starts at whichever of its own rungs means the same thing:

0 — None. No exposure. A legitimate answer, not a failure.
1 — Awareness. Can describe it and follow a runbook with supervision.
2 — Working. Handles routine cases unaided.
3 — Practitioner. Handles novel and complex cases; reviews others' work.
4 — Authority. Sets the standard, teaches it, represents the organisation on it.

Everything lives in this browser's sessionStorage under the pumaskills. prefix. No network, no server, no account.

Installing it changes nothing about where your data lives. Served over http or https the app installs and launches offline, but what gets cached is the app — the assessments stay in this browser and nowhere else. Installing does ask the browser to make that storage persistent, which makes it much less likely to be evicted when the device is short of space.

Export writes a .pumapack — every assessment, person, rating, plan and requisition in one JSON file. ⌘S / Ctrl+S does the same.
Import accepts that file back, or you can drag it onto the window. It is a restore: a pack replaces every assessment held here, so it asks first and offers to export what you have. A .csv of self-assessment responses is merged into the open assessment instead, and never replaces anything.
An assessment can also be exported on its own: the client-facing report (rendered, with Copy Markdown, .md, Print / PDF and .docx) or .xlsx — a live workbook whose Gaps and Fit sheets are formulas over the matrix, so it keeps working when edited in Excel. The same menu offers it blank, as a template a team without the app can run an assessment in.

There is no copy anywhere else. Clearing this site's data, opening the app in a private window, switching browsers, or losing this device erases every assessment. Export before anything you would not want to redo.

Personnel data. This app stores names alongside judgements about competence. That is exactly the kind of record that should not be in a SaaS tool you have not reviewed, which is much of why it is built this way — but staying local does not make it exempt. Know your obligations, tell people they are being assessed, and delete assessments you no longer need.

Clear all local data

Danger zone. This erases every PumaSkills assessment in this browser — every person, rating, plan and requisition. Export a backup first.

⌘/Ctrl + K

Command palette — jump to any view, person, role, or action

?

Open this help

⌘/Ctrl + S

Save a quick backup

1–9

Switch view — Overview through Setup, in tab order

P

Add a person

/

Focus the filter box

0–7

Set the focused matrix cell's level — digits above the scale's top rung do nothing

← → ↑ ↓

Move around the matrix

Enter / Space

Raise the focused cell — with Shift, lower it

Click

Select a matrix cell — a second click raises it; a click never edits an unselected cell

⌘/Ctrl + Z

Undo the last rating change in this assessment — one change at a time, back through this session

Shift + click

Lower the selected matrix cell (right-click does the same)

Esc

Close drawer / dialog / menu

About PumaSkills

PumaSkills is a simple team capability and coverage visualizer. It is an upgrade to the classic excel based skills matrix.

Provided as-is, with no warranty. Competency assessment is a judgement exercise: the app records and computes on judgements you supply, and does not validate them. Nothing here is employment, legal or HR advice.

About PumaWorx

PumaWorx is a suite of offline, single-HTML productivity apps that run entirely in your local browser. The entire suite is a personal, open source vibecoding project.

Four other scales ship — GDS-, e-CF-, CIISec- and SFIA-shaped — for organisations already running on one. They borrow the rung count and progression only; every label and definition is PumaWorx's, as is the competency wording and the requirement profiles in the NICE and DCWF catalogues, where just the role names and codes are the frameworks'. Cite the framework directly if a deliverable depends on it. Note that the SFIA-shaped scale grades responsibility, not depth.

Dev build

Built by greykit.com

PumaSkills — security team competency assessment

What's new

Clear all local data

About PumaSkills

About PumaWorx