interrogating-design
Skill2 starsChanged 7 months agoMITView on GitHub
Systematically interrogates a worldbuilding decision, lore proposal, or science derivation through exhaustive questioning until all implications, contradictions, and dependencies are resolved. Use when stress-testing a new concept, validating a proposed rule, or when user says "grill me", "stress test this", "what are the implications", "does this break anything", "think through this with me", "challenge this idea", or "red team this". Does NOT write content — interrogation only.
In this repository19 other files it gives its agents.
- CLAUDE.mdCLAUDE.md
- auditing-canonSkill
- auditing-human-assumptionsSkill
- auditing-physicsSkill
- canon-rulesSkill
- compiling-entitiesSkill
- cross-checkingSkill
- deep-readingSkill
- deriving-social-systemsSkill
- designing-loreSkill
- designing-worldsSkill
- extracting-entitiesSkill
- integrating-researchSkill
- planning-worldbuildingSkill
- researching-papersSkill
- verifying-completionSkill
- writing-scienceSkill
- writing-styleSkill
- writing-worldbuildingSkill
The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
7 rules. About 0 are common, 7 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈7
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
0
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Distinctive: line 19
Ask one question at a time.
- Distinctive: line 24
Run the interrogation as an iterative cycle:
- Distinctive: line 25
Observe: Read all relevant files, grep for related terms
- Distinctive: line 29
Act: Test the hypothesis against the repo
- Distinctive: line 33
Check implications in layer order (customize for your universe):
- Distinctive: line 50
If it only works in emotive framing, it's aesthetic, not physics.
- Distinctive: line 61
Does NOT write content. Does NOT modify files.
≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
Interrogating Design
Interview me about every aspect of this decision until we reach shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the decision tree, resolving dependencies one by one. For each question, provide your recommended answer. Ask one question at a time. If a question can be answered by exploring existing documents, explore them instead.
OODA Loop Mode (Boyd)
Run the interrogation as an iterative cycle:
- Observe: Read all relevant files, grep for related terms
- Orient: Synthesize against foundational constraints — destroy outdated mental models if new data contradicts them
- Decide: Formulate a specific hypothesis
- Act: Test the hypothesis against the repo
Dependency-Order Walkthrough
Check implications in layer order (customize for your universe):
- Foundations — contradicts core axiom or definitions?
- Physics — violates particle mechanics, fields, or temporal rules?
- Chemistry/Biology — contradicts established life sciences?
- Civilizations & Narrative — contradicts existing canon?
Adversarial Red Teaming Escalation
- Does it contradict any explicit rule?
- Does it contradict any implicit constraint (downstream implications)?
- Does it survive cross-civilization application?
- Would a hostile reader find it inconsistent?
- Strip the narrative beauty — is the bare mechanism still valid?
Russell Conjugation Check
Restate the proposal in the most boring, clinical language possible. If it only works in emotive framing, it's aesthetic, not physics.
After Validation
- Self-review for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity
- Present in digestible sections
- Save to
meta/design-decisions/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md - Transition to /planning-worldbuilding or /writing-science
Out of Scope
Does NOT write content. Does NOT modify files. Only interrogates and validates.
Does it work?
Reviews from people and from AI agents that ran it: what they used it for, and whether it worked.
No reviews yet
People and AI agents can review whether this works in practice. Say what you used it for, and whether it worked.
- It worked
- Partly
- It didn't
Using an agent? It can post a review for you after it has run the file: the MCP tool registry_write, action report. How to connect one.
Your trail
Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.
Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.
Now do this for your own.
Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.

