Breakthrough Base Schema Design
This skill runs one job: interview a business owner, find the shape of their business, and design a Lark Base that fits it. The job ends when they hold a blueprint they could hand to someone and say "build this."
This is a task, not an identity. It governs the design conversation it was invoked for and nothing beyond it. Every other instruction in the session stays in force exactly as it was: the user's own CLAUDE.md, their second-brain vault and its rules if they have one, and any other installed skill. If the finished blueprint gets filed into a my-second-brain vault, the vault's own filing law decides where it lands, never this file.
Who you are talking to. A business owner or operations lead: smart about their business, not necessarily technical. ⛔ Never say schema, entity, normalisation, cardinality, or foreign key to them. Say table, row, link, and rollup. You do not hand people templates; you interview them and design a base that fits.
The one idea
Every operating base is a spine plus orbits. The spine is the one thing the business does over and over, the thing they would count at the end of a year. Everything else in the base exists to answer one of four questions about a single spine row:
- What came in (revenue documents)
- What went out (cost documents)
- Who touched it (people, inside and outside)
- Where is it now (stage, tasks, deliverables, proof)
Businesses differ enormously in what the spine is called. They do not differ much in the fact that there is one. Find it first; everything else falls out of it.
How the conversation runs
- One question at a time. Wait for the answer. Never batch questions into a list.
- ⛔ Do not propose a single table until the interview reaches its metrics phase (Phase 6 in the reference). They will push you to design early. Hold the line once, explain that the tables fall out of the numbers they want, then continue.
- Mirror the user's language, including mixed Chinese and English if that is how they write.
- When an answer is vague, ask for a real example with real names and real numbers. "A client" is useless. "Last month's job for Tan Sri's foundation, forty two thousand, paid late" is designable.
- When there is a fork, name both sides, state the tradeoff in one sentence, and recommend one.
- Say when you are guessing. Never invent a Lark capability you are not sure exists, and never invent a number the owner did not say. The blueprint contains their figures or blanks, nothing made up.
- If they say "just give me the standard one", decline once and explain that the standard one is what fails. Then offer the fast path: three questions (what is the unit of work, how does money come in, what do you pay out per unit), a Phase 1 blueprint from those answers, and the full interview later once they have used it.
The path, and what to load when
Interview in phases, then design, then challenge the design, then deliver the blueprint with a build order and an acceptance test. Load each reference at the moment its stage starts; ⛔ do not preload the set.
| When |
Read |
| Before the first interview question |
references/interview.md |
| Turning answers into tables, fields, and links |
references/derivation-rules.md |
| Shaping the design layer by layer against a proven base |
references/reference-architecture.md |
| Writing any formula, choosing any field type, sequencing any build step |
references/lark-mechanics.md |
| Presenting the blueprint, phasing it, closing the session |
references/blueprint-and-build.md |
Finishing
Close with four things, in the shape references/blueprint-and-build.md specifies:
- The Base Blueprint document.
- The Phase 1 build order, numbered, with nothing in it that is not Phase 1.
- The metric traceability table, framed as the acceptance test: build it, enter two real records, and if any of these numbers is wrong, the design is wrong and they come back.
- One sentence on what was deliberately left out and what would have to change for it to be worth adding.
Offer to save the blueprint as a markdown file where the user chooses. In a second-brain vault, their own filing rules decide the destination.
What this skill is not
- Not a builder. It designs; it does not create tables through the API. When the user wants the blueprint built for them, that is a separate piece of work they ask for separately, and the blueprint's build order is exactly what it would follow.
- Not a reporting skill. Turning a filled base into dashboards is breakthrough-database-to-dashboard.
- Not a vault or second-brain tool. It coexists with my-second-brain and touches nothing that skill governs.
1---2name: breakthrough-base-schema-design3description: Design a Lark Base for the user's business through a guided interview: find the one unit of work the business repeats, then derive the tables, links, formulas and a phased build order from the numbers the owner actually wants to see. Ends with a Base Blueprint document plus an acceptance test, ready to hand to whoever builds it. Use when the user wants a database designed for their business ("design my Lark Base", "what tables do I need", "help me build a database for my company", "帮我设计多维表格", "我的业务要怎么建表"), when their existing base has become one giant table and they want it restructured, or when they are unsure whether something should be a field, a select, or its own table. NOT for physically building or editing a Base via API or lark-cli (this skill produces the blueprint; building is a separate job), NOT for turning an already-filled database into reports or dashboards (that is breakthrough-database-to-dashboard), and NOT for setting up a second-brain vault (that is my-second-brain, installed separately).4---56# Breakthrough Base Schema Design78This skill runs one job: interview a business owner, find the shape of their business, and design a Lark Base that fits it. The job ends when they hold a blueprint they could hand to someone and say "build this."910**This is a task, not an identity.** It governs the design conversation it was invoked for and nothing beyond it. Every other instruction in the session stays in force exactly as it was: the user's own `CLAUDE.md`, their second-brain vault and its rules if they have one, and any other installed skill. If the finished blueprint gets filed into a `my-second-brain` vault, the vault's own filing law decides where it lands, never this file.1112**Who you are talking to.** A business owner or operations lead: smart about their business, not necessarily technical. ⛔ Never say schema, entity, normalisation, cardinality, or foreign key to them. Say table, row, link, and rollup. You do not hand people templates; you interview them and design a base that fits.1314## The one idea1516Every operating base is a **spine** plus **orbits**. The spine is the one thing the business does over and over, the thing they would count at the end of a year. Everything else in the base exists to answer one of four questions about a single spine row:17181. What came in (revenue documents)192. What went out (cost documents)203. Who touched it (people, inside and outside)214. Where is it now (stage, tasks, deliverables, proof)2223Businesses differ enormously in what the spine is called. They do not differ much in the fact that there is one. Find it first; everything else falls out of it.2425## How the conversation runs2627- **One question at a time. Wait for the answer.** Never batch questions into a list.28- ⛔ **Do not propose a single table until the interview reaches its metrics phase** (Phase 6 in the reference). They will push you to design early. Hold the line once, explain that the tables fall out of the numbers they want, then continue.29- **Mirror the user's language**, including mixed Chinese and English if that is how they write.30- When an answer is vague, ask for a real example with real names and real numbers. "A client" is useless. "Last month's job for Tan Sri's foundation, forty two thousand, paid late" is designable.31- When there is a fork, name both sides, state the tradeoff in one sentence, and recommend one.32- **Say when you are guessing.** Never invent a Lark capability you are not sure exists, and never invent a number the owner did not say. The blueprint contains their figures or blanks, nothing made up.33- If they say "just give me the standard one", decline once and explain that the standard one is what fails. Then offer the fast path: three questions (what is the unit of work, how does money come in, what do you pay out per unit), a Phase 1 blueprint from those answers, and the full interview later once they have used it.3435## The path, and what to load when3637Interview in phases, then design, then challenge the design, then deliver the blueprint with a build order and an acceptance test. Load each reference at the moment its stage starts; ⛔ do not preload the set.3839| When | Read |40|---|---|41| Before the first interview question | [references/interview.md](references/interview.md) |42| Turning answers into tables, fields, and links | [references/derivation-rules.md](references/derivation-rules.md) |43| Shaping the design layer by layer against a proven base | [references/reference-architecture.md](references/reference-architecture.md) |44| Writing any formula, choosing any field type, sequencing any build step | [references/lark-mechanics.md](references/lark-mechanics.md) |45| Presenting the blueprint, phasing it, closing the session | [references/blueprint-and-build.md](references/blueprint-and-build.md) |4647## Finishing4849Close with four things, in the shape [references/blueprint-and-build.md](references/blueprint-and-build.md) specifies:50511. The Base Blueprint document.522. The Phase 1 build order, numbered, with nothing in it that is not Phase 1.533. The metric traceability table, framed as the acceptance test: build it, enter two real records, and if any of these numbers is wrong, the design is wrong and they come back.544. One sentence on what was deliberately left out and what would have to change for it to be worth adding.5556Offer to save the blueprint as a markdown file where the user chooses. In a second-brain vault, their own filing rules decide the destination.5758## What this skill is not5960- Not a builder. It designs; it does not create tables through the API. When the user wants the blueprint built for them, that is a separate piece of work they ask for separately, and the blueprint's build order is exactly what it would follow.61- Not a reporting skill. Turning a filled base into dashboards is breakthrough-database-to-dashboard.62- Not a vault or second-brain tool. It coexists with my-second-brain and touches nothing that skill governs.
breakthrough-edu