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first-principles

Skill10 starsChanged 38 days agoMITView on GitHub

Reduce an ambiguous technical problem to verified facts, constraints, and explicit decisions before proposing a solution.

30 other projects use a version of this.

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Projects with it also use second-order-thinking, inversion and 3 more.

Other files people use alongside this one.

Files found in the same public projects as a version of this one, more often than they turn up anywhere else. Each project counts once, large collections count for less, and this file's own repository is left out.
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  • GoogleSkill

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  • MicrosoftSkill

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    Compact the current conversation into a handoff document for another agent to pick up.

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The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

1 rule. 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.

  • 0

    Common

    Most of the 21 edited versions we read keep these.

  • 1

    Distinctive

    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:

    Use this skill when a request is ambiguous, a design has accumulated assumptions, or a proposed fix feels like precedent rather than …

    line 8

“Common” is measured: kept by at least 6 in 10 of the 21 edited versions of this file we could read. “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

First-Principles Reasoning

Use this skill when a request is ambiguous, a design has accumulated assumptions, or a proposed fix feels like precedent rather than necessity.

  1. State the desired outcome and the decision that must be made.
  2. Separate observations, requirements, constraints, assumptions, and preferences.
  3. Decompose the system into actors, inputs, transformations, outputs, and failure states.
  4. Identify the smallest facts that would change the decision; verify those facts from the repository, tests, or authoritative sources.
  5. Rebuild the solution from the verified facts. Preserve real constraints, but discard inherited process and terminology that do not serve the outcome.
  6. Record trade-offs, unresolved uncertainty, and the cheapest useful next experiment.

Output a compact decision record with: objective, facts, constraints, assumptions, options considered, chosen design, risks, and verification evidence. Do not present an assumption as a fact.

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