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tonydzitonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/skills/five-hard/SKILL.md

five-hard

Skill6 starsChanged 2 months agoMITView on GitHub

Have the second brain ask the owner five hard questions about their own long-held beliefs and codex entries that have not been revisited, so assumptions stop fossilizing. Monthly or on demand. Triggers: "/five-hard", "challenge my beliefs", "pressure-test my views".

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

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

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈1

    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:

    Read each note IN FULL and give ONE hard question per note:

    line 22

≈ “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.

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Files
SKILL.md

/five-hard — five hard questions

🧒 When reporting to a non-technical operator, end with a child-simple "In plain words" recap in their language.

Why: the identity layer (belief-* + concept-bible-*, ~24 notes) is "how I think". That gets dangerous once part of it is wrong and nobody has checked. Here the brain itself starts the pressure-test.

Run

python "$IMPORTS_ROOT/five_hard_pick.py" -> the 5 most stagnant notes (oldest mtime) -> $IMPORTS_ROOT/_five_hard_pick.json. Override: env FIVE_HARD_N=7.

The questions (top-model quality — identity synthesis, not grunt work)

Read each note IN FULL and give ONE hard question per note:

N. **[<stem>]** — <the owner's thesis in your own words>
   Question: <sharp, Socratic, capable of forcing a rethink>
   Why it is hard: <which counter-fact or trend could flip it>

Style: Socratic — not "you are wrong" but "what makes you sure today?"; lean on CONCRETE recent signals; epistemic-neutrality; aim at the UNTESTED edge (the "tension / nuance" section), not at the part already reflected on. "The rule still stands" is a valid answer (bible-as-prompt).

Recording the answer (long memory; backup-first: vault_backup.py)

-> $OBSIDIAN_VAULT/04-Coach/_Five-Hard/five-hard-YYYY-MM-DD.md Frontmatter: title, date, type: five-hard, source: claude-session, tags: [five-hard, coach, identity-layer]. Body: the questions + the owner's answers verbatim; if they changed position, propose a diff to the belief/bible note with supersedes: (via /intake). NO 🧒 block inside the note.

Scheduled twin

Cron five-hard-monthly: 1st of the month, 05:25 Lisbon (the briefing window, routines-run-at-night). Picker -> questions (top-model subagent) -> the fleet log chat via python $USERPROFILE/.claude/scripts/bus_ping.py --post "..." (canon: alerts go to the fleet log chat, never to Saved Messages) + "answer by voice or text, I will file it into the vault". The manual twin is this skill; the single source of truth is the picker.

Related

[[self-bible-identity-layer]] · [[bible-as-prompt]] · [[epistemic-neutrality]] · /coach (daily) vs /five-hard (monthly). Active-brain map A-E: item B. ⚠️ Restored 2026-07-04 after the 2026-06-24 migration wipe.

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Like this skill? It is one of 100 in second-brain-starter-kit: the second brain we built for ourselves and run every day at Palo Alto AI Research Lab. Install the whole set with npx skills add tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit. Everything is open source and free, so take what you need.

Flagships worth a look on their own: secondop-panel (a second opinion from a panel of external models), claude-memory-tidy (stop your agent's memory from rotting), telegram-mcp-kit (your own Telegram over MCP in about 15 minutes).

Author: Anton Dziatkovskii, Palo Alto AI Research Lab. Telegram @tonydzi - WhatsApp +1 341 222 9178 - X @Tony_Stef_

Engineers: want to test-drive this setup? Message me. I hand out free starter seeds to engineers who test and report back, and custom skill requests are welcome.

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