Skills For Humanity

Evaluate an algorithm, model, ranking system, recommendation engine, or automated decision process for discriminatory patterns and unfair outcomes. Use before deploying any system that makes decisions about people or ranks/filters/scores people. TRIGGERS: 'bias check', 'check this algorithm for bias', 'is this fair', 'fairness audit', any ML model, ranking function, scoring system, content recommendation, or automated decision that differentiates between people.

Audit a data collection, retention, or sharing decision against ethical standards. Use when the user is making decisions about what data to collect, how long to keep it, who can access it, or who it's shared with. TRIGGERS: 'audit this data decision', 'is this data practice ok', 'data ethics check', any change to data models, privacy controls, analytics instrumentation, data sharing agreements, or retention policies. Goes beyond legal compliance — evaluates whether the practice is ethical, not just lawful.

Models how things spread through networks — ideas, behaviors, viruses, product adoption, financial contagion, cascading failures. Use when asked 'why did this go viral', 'why isn't this spreading', 'how do we accelerate adoption', 'what's the tipping point', 'could this cascade', or when modeling any spread or diffusion process through a connected system.

Maps bridging connections across structural holes — the counterintuitive power of loose connections. Use when asked 'where are the silos', 'why are we missing information', 'how do I find opportunities', 'who are the connectors', 'why are teams not collaborating', 'what bridges are missing', or when the question involves information flow, cross-functional collaboration, or network position as a competitive advantage.

Maps parties, identifies natural allies and swing parties, and assesses alliance stability for coalition-building in competitive contexts. Triggers: 'build alliances', 'coalition building', 'who are my allies', 'manage stakeholders', 'political coalition', 'alliance strategy', 'who do I need on my side', 'get people on board', 'organizational politics'.

Writes and audits technical documentation, API docs, user guides, and specifications for completeness, sequence, precision, and audience calibration. Use when documentation is confusing, assumes too much knowledge, or leaves gaps a user can't bridge. Triggers: 'technical writing', 'API documentation', 'write documentation', 'user guide', 'technical docs', 'the documentation is confusing', 'write a spec', 'docs are missing steps'.

Uses constraints productively — maps hard limits, soft preferences, and how the tightest constraints define the solution space. Triggers: 'what are the design constraints', 'map the constraints', 'what are we working within', 'what's fixed', 'constraint-driven design', 'what does the solution space look like', 'working within limits'.

Applies ecological succession to understand how systems evolve through stages — pioneer, consolidation, climax, and disturbance. Use when asked 'what stage are we at', 'where are we in the cycle', 'what comes next', 'the old model isn't working anymore', 'we're in transition', or 'what does disruption mean for us'.

Run a quick ethical impact assessment on a proposed feature, change, or decision before it ships. Use when the user is about to build or ship something and wants to surface who benefits, who's harmed, and at what scale — before commitments are made. TRIGGERS: 'ethics scan', 'impact check', 'who does this affect', 'is this safe to ship', any new feature proposal where stakeholder impact is unclear. Lightweight — takes minutes, not hours.

Identifies which nodes in a network have the most influence, reach, or control. Use when asked 'who are the key players', 'who should we target', 'where is the bottleneck', 'who connects everyone', 'who would we lose most if they left', or when mapping influence in an organisation, market, or social network.

Manages information asymmetry in legitimate competitive contexts — what to protect, what impressions work in your favor, and what your opponent may be concealing from you. Triggers: 'conceal my position', 'information asymmetry', 'misdirection', 'what should I reveal vs conceal', 'negotiation deception', 'strategic ambiguity', 'manage what they know about me', 'read their signals'.

Maps and repairs character arcs and thematic arcs by aligning external plot events with internal change. Use when an arc feels unearned, a change feels sudden, or the ending doesn't land. Triggers: 'the arc feels unearned', 'arc design', 'the ending doesn't land', 'character arc', 'thematic arc', 'the change feels sudden', 'the character just changes at the end'.

Maps the attention economy of a mind or situation — what captures it, what depletes it, and how to protect it. Use when asked 'why can't I focus', 'attention keeps getting pulled away', 'how do I protect deep work', 'what's stealing my focus', 'I keep getting distracted', or when designing environments, workflows, or communications that need to respect cognitive bandwidth.

Apply Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats for structured parallel thinking. Use when the user wants to think through a decision, plan, or idea from multiple angles; wants to avoid groupthink or one-dimensional analysis; is preparing for a meeting or discussion; or wants a complete map of a situation before committing. Also use when the user mentions 'devil's advocate', 'playing it safe', 'gut feeling', or wants both optimism and caution applied to the same thing.

Identifies what can't be known and why, then clarifies what can be established within those limits and reframes the question into its answerable part. Distinguishes fundamental limits (Gödel, underdetermination, observer effects), practical limits (evidence is unavailable, destroyed, or counterfactual), and conceptual limits (the question is malformed). Use when you say 'can this even be known', 'we keep investigating and it doesn't settle', 'is this question actually answerable', 'I need to know X but X might be unknowable', 'we have a hard epistemological limit here', or when investigation has been thorough but the question remains open.

Analyses coevolutionary escalation — when parties adapt to each other in cycles that may help neither. Triggers: 'arms race', 'coevolution', 'escalation spiral', 'we keep one-upping each other', 'race to the bottom', 'they adapt to everything we do', 'tit-for-tat escalation', 'are we running to stand still', 'coevolutionary treadmill'.

Analyses bidding strategy and auction design — how much to bid, how to avoid the winner's curse, and how to design revenue-maximising or efficient auctions. Triggers: 'bidding strategy', 'auction analysis', 'how much should I bid', 'auction design', 'winner's curse', 'sealed bid', 'how do I avoid overbidding', 'procurement auction', 'design an auction', 'competitive offer'.

Measures uncertainty, surprise, and information content using Shannon entropy. Use when asked 'how much information does this actually contain', 'how uncertain is this source', 'is this result surprising', 'what should I update on', 'where is the real information in this dataset', or when you need to distinguish high-information from low-information inputs.

Identifies how the frame around an issue shapes what options are visible and what conclusions feel natural. Use when you say 'how is this being framed', 'reframe this', 'I want to see this differently', 'the way we're talking about this feels wrong', 'what frame is being used here', or when a conversation keeps hitting the same wall.

Diagnoses and repairs structural problems in non-fiction, essays, and documents — wrong order, buried lead, wrong ending, proportion errors. Use when a piece is in the wrong order, starts too late, or spends space on the wrong things. Triggers: 'the piece is in the wrong order', 'restructure', 'buries the lede', 'the structure is off', 'reorganise this', 'the ending is in the wrong place', 'takes too long to get to the point'.

Rapid multi-framework ethical assessment when something has already gone wrong — a data breach, a harmful outcome, a discriminatory incident, a policy failure, or any situation requiring an urgent ethical response. Use when the user is dealing with an active incident or has just discovered something went wrong. TRIGGERS: 'ethics triage', 'something went wrong', 'incident ethics', 'how do we handle this', any post-incident or mid-incident situation where the ethical dimensions of a response need to be worked out fast.

Evaluate a third-party vendor, supplier, partner, or integration against ethical standards before signing a contract or shipping their code or service. Use when considering a new supplier, SaaS tool, data provider, API integration, outsourcing arrangement, or partnership. TRIGGERS: 'vet this vendor', 'is this supplier ok', 'ethics check on this partner', 'should we use this third party', any third-party evaluation where labour practices, data handling, business model, or alignment with values is a consideration.

Analyses long-run repeated interactions — how cooperation forms, how trust is built, how defection spirals start, and which strategies sustain cooperation. Triggers: 'repeated game', 'iterated strategy', 'long-run relationship', 'reputation effects', 'how do I sustain cooperation', 'tit for tat', 'shadow of the future', 'will they defect', 'ongoing relationship after betrayal', 'how do we recover from this'.

Finds where resources are being lost, duplicated, or underused — the seven wastes applied to knowledge work. Triggers: 'waste audit', 'where are we wasting resources', 'inefficiency audit', 'find the waste', 'what's being duplicated', 'resource leakage'.

Maps who holds power — formal authority, informal influence, gatekeeping, expertise — and how it flows. Triggers: 'power map', 'who has power here', 'who actually decides', 'map the politics', 'who do I need to get on board', 'who are the gatekeepers'.

Builds the conditions for competitive unassailability before the contest begins. Triggers: 'create a position', 'competitive positioning', 'make myself the obvious choice', 'how do I make myself hard to compete with', 'strategic positioning', 'establish advantage before competing', 'what makes me hard to displace', 'build a moat'.

Applies five-category line-editing passes to identify and repair redundancy, nominalisations, passive voice, rhythmic monotony, and throat-clearing. Use when prose is clunky, wordy, or mechanically flawed. Triggers: 'the sentences are clunky', 'line editing', 'the prose is wordy', 'tighten this up', 'sentence-level editing', 'too many passive constructions', 'the writing is verbose'.

Run an orchestrated multi-method creative thinking sprint on a challenge. Use when the user wants to make real progress on a hard problem, says 'I need to think through this properly', wants a thorough creative exploration rather than a single technique, has a big decision or challenge and wants the full toolkit applied, or just says 'help me think through this'. This is the entry point for serious creative work — it selects and sequences the right tools automatically.

Maps what is building and eroding trust in a relationship or situation — trust degrades silently until it fails loudly. TRIGGERS: 'trust audit', 'why don't they trust us', 'relationship health check', 'what's eroding trust', 'build trust with'.

Review a UX flow, data practice, or communication pattern to verify that user consent is genuine — informed, voluntary, and meaningful. Use during design or implementation of checkout flows, onboarding, notification settings, permissions requests, terms of service, dark patterns, or any feature where users make choices about what they share or agree to. TRIGGERS: 'consent review', 'is this dark pattern', 'check this onboarding flow', 'is this consent genuine', any UX that involves users agreeing to something, sharing data, or opting in/out.

Applies Jaron Lanier's Circle of Empathy framework to determine which entities deserve moral consideration and rights. Use when questions arise about AI personhood, machine rights, robot citizenship, algorithmic agency, animal rights, or any decision about which entities belong inside or outside the circle of moral concern. Triggers: 'does this AI deserve rights?', 'should we treat this system as a person?', 'circle of empathy', 'moral consideration', 'AI personhood', 'which entities matter morally', 'are we anthropomorphizing?', 'is this a category error?'

Analyses which coalitions form and how to divide gains fairly using cooperative game theory and the Shapley value. Triggers: 'coalition formation', 'who should we partner with', 'cooperative game theory', 'Shapley value', 'fair division', 'stable coalition', 'which coalition will form', 'equity split', 'power in a coalition', 'how should we divide this up fairly'.

Analyses credibility problems and designs signals that are believable because they're costly to fake. Triggers: 'how do I signal credibly', 'signaling', 'they won't believe me', 'cheap talk', 'commitment device', 'how do I make a credible commitment', 'asymmetric information', 'how do I prove I'm serious', 'they don't trust my claim'.

Assess the fast-thinking pattern at work — when it's reliable, when it misleads, and whether to trust or override it. Triggers: 'should I trust my gut', 'is my intuition right here', 'fast thinking', 'heuristic', 'when does instinct work', 'System 1 vs System 2', 'pattern recognition', 'am I just pattern matching', 'is this a gut check or analysis question'.

Diagnose what's actually driving behavior — the person's own, someone else's, or a group's. Surface motivation vs. root motivation. Triggers: 'what motivates them', 'why are they doing this', 'what does this person actually want', 'how do I get buy-in', 'why won't they engage', 'what's really driving this', 'intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation', 'what need is this serving'.

Identify the right influence approach and construct it for the context. What actually changes minds and drives action. Triggers: 'how do I persuade', 'how do I change their mind', 'what would convince them', 'how do I get buy-in', 'how do I influence', 'influence strategy', 'how do I pitch this', 'what makes a persuasive case', 'how do I get them to say yes'.

Finds specific details being overlooked — the most important information is often present but not being registered. Triggers: 'what are we missing', 'go deeper on this', 'find the details', 'be more specific', 'what exactly is happening', 'ground this in specifics'.

Audits what you actually know vs. what you're assuming about yourself and your opponent before acting. Triggers: 'what do I actually know', 'intelligence audit', 'know your enemy', 'what am I assuming vs knowing', 'prep for negotiation', 'what information do I have', 'what don't I know about them', 'am I missing something important'.

Audits a fictional world for internal consistency, texture, economy, and constraint-story alignment. Use when a world feels thin, generic, like a backdrop rather than a place people actually inhabit. Triggers: 'the world feels thin', 'worldbuilding', 'my world doesn't feel real', 'the setting is generic', 'world audit', 'the world feels like a backdrop'.

Apply Edward de Bono's Concept Fan to expand the solution space before committing to an approach. Use when the user has a goal or problem and wants to see the full range of ways to achieve it, feels locked into one solution, is evaluating options and wants to make sure they haven't missed any, or wants to think at different levels of abstraction before deciding.

Apply Edward de Bono's Provocation Operation (Po) to use deliberately absurd or impossible statements as springboards to new ideas. Use when the user wants to break out of conventional thinking, says 'let's try something radical', wants to use provocation as a creative tool, or is stuck and needs an unconventional jolt. Also trigger when the user uses the prefix 'Po:' before a statement.

Apply Edward de Bono's water logic for flow-based, non-judgmental exploration. Use when the user is in early-stage exploration and premature categorization is killing promising directions, wants to follow where ideas lead without forcing conclusions, is working on something open-ended where 'is this right?' is the wrong question, or needs to map possibilities before judging them. Water logic is the alternative to rock logic.

Diagnoses collective action failures, public goods problems, and why individually rational behaviour produces collective irrationality. Triggers: 'collective action problem', 'tragedy of the commons', 'free rider', 'everyone is acting in their own interest but the result is bad for all', 'why won't people contribute', 'public good', 'how do we get people to cooperate', 'commons', any situation where individual rationality produces group-level harm.

Maps where redundancy creates resilience and error correction versus where it creates waste. Use when asked about 'duplication', 'repetition', 'backup systems', 'is this redundant?', 'we're saying the same thing twice', 'single point of failure', or 'is this repetition helping or hurting'.

Analyzes what is implied rather than said — the gap between literal content and communicative meaning. Use when you say 'what does this really mean', 'what is this message actually doing', 'is this a threat', 'what is being implied here', 'what does this leave unsaid', 'why does this feel off even though it seems polite', or when a communication seems fine on the surface but something is wrong underneath.

Finds the minimum intervention that achieves the objective — especially when you're outgunned or under-resourced. Triggers: 'do more with less', 'force economy', 'we're under-resourced', 'asymmetric advantage', 'outgunned', 'leverage point', 'how do we win when they have more', 'we can't outspend them', 'small team big problem'.

Diagnoses structural failures in a story using the five-beat dramatic framework — inciting incident, first turning point, midpoint, dark night, climax. Use when a plot isn't working, the middle drags, momentum is lost, or the story feels loose. Triggers: 'the story isn't working', 'plot structure', 'my middle drags', 'the plot feels loose', 'story structure', 'momentum problem', 'the structure is off'.

Diagnoses and repairs tone drift — shifts in register, formality, warmth, or rhythm that make a piece feel like it was written by multiple people or in multiple moods. Use when the voice changes mid-piece without intention. Triggers: 'the tone keeps shifting', 'tone drift', 'tone alignment', 'inconsistent register', 'the voice changes mid-piece', 'this sounds like different writers'.

Imports solutions from unrelated domains by finding structural similarities between your problem and solved problems elsewhere. Triggers: 'cross-domain analogy', 'what solves this elsewhere', 'find a parallel problem', 'look outside this field', 'borrow a solution'.

Surfaces and audits the internal representations that drive perception and decision-making. Use when asked 'what assumptions am I making', 'why do I keep seeing this the same way', 'what model is driving this decision', 'I think I'm missing something about how this works', 'what's my mental model here', or when a belief or decision pattern needs to be examined from the inside.

Applies thinking-about-thinking as a practical tool — monitoring comprehension, calibrating confidence, and knowing what you do not know. Use when asked 'how confident should I be about this', 'am I actually understanding this or just recognising it', 'what do I not know that I should know', 'I think I understand this but I keep getting it wrong', 'calibrate my confidence', or when the quality of reasoning on a complex problem needs to be assessed from the outside.

Apply Edward de Bono's APC (Alternatives, Possibilities, Choices) tool to deliberately generate options before evaluating any of them. Use when the user is about to make a decision, wants more options before choosing, feels like they only see two paths, is planning something and wants to make sure they've considered all the approaches, or tends to go with the first good idea.

Apply Edward de Bono's Random Entry technique — use an unrelated word, object, or image as a creative springboard to break out of cognitive ruts. Use when the user is stuck, wants unexpected inspiration, asks for a random creative prompt, wants to approach something from a completely fresh angle, or says they've exhausted their usual thinking. The randomness is the point — don't skip it.

Ensures all real options are visible before choosing — countering the false dichotomy that limits consideration to the first two options that came to mind. Triggers: 'what are all the options', 'false dichotomy check', 'expand the option set', 'what else could we do', 'options inventory'.

Maps dependency webs and the cascading effects of removing or changing a node in the web. Use when asked 'who depends on whom', 'what cascades if we change X', 'downstream effects', 'what holds this together', 'ripple effects', or 'what breaks if we remove this'.

Identifies costs and benefits not borne by the decision-maker — and how to internalise them. Triggers: 'externality', 'who else is affected', 'costs falling on others', 'side effects', 'spillover', 'the market isn't accounting for this', 'negative externality', 'positive externality', 'social cost vs. private cost', 'Pigou', any situation where the person deciding does not bear all the consequences.

Finds the stable outcome of a strategic interaction — the point where no player can improve their result by changing their strategy alone. Triggers: 'Nash equilibrium', 'dominant strategy', 'what's the stable outcome', 'equilibrium analysis', 'payoff matrix', 'what will rational players do', 'where will this land'.

Applies lossy vs lossless compression thinking to representation and communication. Use when asked to 'cut this down', 'what can I remove', 'what's essential here', 'summarise without losing the key point', 'what must be preserved', or when a representation needs to be more efficient without becoming misleading.

Maps the emotional and political freight that words carry beyond their literal meaning. Use when you say 'this word feels wrong', 'what does this term really signal', 'is this word loaded', 'find a better word for this', 'what are the connotations of', 'why does this language feel off', or when word choice is creating unintended reactions.

Map causal relationships, trace dependencies, and reason about consequences before acting. Use when you need to understand what causes what, what breaks if something changes, or what must be true for a plan to work. TRIGGERS: 'map the dependencies', 'what causes this', 'what breaks if I change X', 'trace the root cause', 'if X then what', 'what has to be true for this to work', any situation involving root cause analysis, impact assessment, dependency tracing, or reasoning about chains of effect.