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alainatoralainator/worldcodex/.claude/skills/interrogating-design/SKILL.md

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.

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
  1. Distinctive:

    Ask one question at a time.

    line 19
  2. Distinctive:

    Run the interrogation as an iterative cycle:

    line 24
  3. Distinctive:

    Observe: Read all relevant files, grep for related terms

    line 25
  4. Distinctive:

    Act: Test the hypothesis against the repo

    line 29
  5. Distinctive:

    Check implications in layer order (customize for your universe):

    line 33
  6. Distinctive:

    If it only works in emotive framing, it's aesthetic, not physics.

    line 50
  7. Distinctive:

    Does NOT write content. Does NOT modify files.

    line 61

≈ “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.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

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):

  1. Foundations — contradicts core axiom or definitions?
  2. Physics — violates particle mechanics, fields, or temporal rules?
  3. Chemistry/Biology — contradicts established life sciences?
  4. Civilizations & Narrative — contradicts existing canon?

Adversarial Red Teaming Escalation

  1. Does it contradict any explicit rule?
  2. Does it contradict any implicit constraint (downstream implications)?
  3. Does it survive cross-civilization application?
  4. Would a hostile reader find it inconsistent?
  5. 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

  1. Self-review for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity
  2. Present in digestible sections
  3. Save to meta/design-decisions/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md
  4. Transition to /planning-worldbuilding or /writing-science

Out of Scope

Does NOT write content. Does NOT modify files. Only interrogates and validates.

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