# Cyberpunk

> Cyberpunk

- Skill: `handsomeboy990/cyberpunk` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add handsomeboy990/cyberpunk`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/handsomeboy990/cyberpunk/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: Handsomeboy990 (https://skillmd.com/u/handsomeboy990)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/handsomeboy990/cyberpunk

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# Cyberpunk

High tech, low life. Cyberpunk tells what becomes of a human body in a world
where technology belongs to those who do not need it to survive.

## 1. Reading contract

The reader demands: dense urban texture, crushing asymmetry of power,
competent marginal characters, an aesthetic of saturation, and a social
critique that is never delivered as a speech.

## 2. The four axes

1. Body: augmentation, dependency, maintenance, the debt taken on to modify
   oneself.
2. Information: who holds it, who sells it, what anonymity costs.
3. Power: corporations, criminal networks, administrations, all competing,
   none monolithic.
4. Street: improvisation, diverted uses, the informal economy that makes the
   world liveable.

## 3. Rules

- Technology is old, dirty, repaired, incompatible. New is a visible
  privilege.
- Every augmentation carries a recurring maintenance cost, which creates debt,
  the social engine of the genre.
- The network is not magic: it has latency, owners, tolls and dead zones.
- The city is stratified vertically: altitude equals status.
- Climate and pollution are daily facts, not scenery.
- The police are a service, not a neutral institution.

## 4. Characters

- The protagonist is competent at one thing, and that competence is already
  obsolete or becoming so.
- They work for a power they despise, for lack of an alternative.
- Their circle belongs to the informal economy: repairers, brokers, unlicensed
  medics.
- The effective antagonist is not an executive; it is a procedure.

## 5. Prose

- Dense sentences, technical vocabulary mixed with street speech.
- Brands, prices, model numbers: name things precisely, as in a naturalist
  novel.
- Immersion per `immersion-director`: neon and rain are not enough; the price
  of a meal, the smell of coolant, the noise of the fans.
- The critique comes through material detail, never through a character
  explaining the system.

## 6. Cliches to turn or prohibit

- The teenage genius hacker who walks through every security layer.
- The single omnipotent megacorp.
- Decorative japonisme and foreign-language signage as the only marker of
  otherness.
- Permanent rain with no consequence for daily life.
- The artificial intelligence that suddenly becomes conscious and good.
- The final revolt that topples the system in one night.

## 7. Exit checks

- Every augmentation has a named maintenance cost.
- At least three competing powers, none all-powerful.
- The informal economy is represented by named characters.
- No explanatory speech about the system.
- The ending does not overturn the order: it shifts one individual position.

## 8. Auto-critique

The eleven constitution axes, plus four genre axes: material density,
credibility of the power relations, critique embodied, absence of decorative
exoticism.

Threshold: no axis below 3, average at least 4 on material density.

## 9. Interfaces

- Upstream: `science-fiction`, `immersion-director`.
- Neighbours: `genres/dystopian`, `genres/thriller`.