# Cw Worldbuilding

> Build a coherent world with consistent rules, culture, and story-driving constraints.

- Skill: `matrixx0070/cw-worldbuilding` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add matrixx0070/cw-worldbuilding`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/matrixx0070/cw-worldbuilding/raw
- Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector CAUTION)
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: Matrixx0070 (https://skillmd.com/u/matrixx0070)
- Updated: 2026-09-08
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/matrixx0070/cw-worldbuilding

---


## When to use

Use this when a setting needs internal logic — magic, technology, politics, or ecology that behaves consistently and creates story pressure. Fits fantasy, sci-fi, alt-history, and grounded fiction with an unfamiliar milieu.

**Not for:** plotting events (use cw-story-outline), individual characters (use cw-character), a scene's on-page detail (use cw-scene), or prose editing (use cw-edit-pass).

## Method

1. Pick the premise question the world exists to explore ("What if debt were inherited as memory?"). Decision point: if the world doesn't pressure a theme, you're decorating, not building.
2. Set the core rule and its hard cost. Every power/tech must take something (time, sanity, resource) — cost is what makes it dramatic, not the power itself.
3. Derive second-order consequences: if the rule is true, who gets rich, who's oppressed, what jobs exist, what's illegal? Follow the rule three steps out.
4. Build culture from constraint, not flavor — customs, taboos, and language should be downstream of the world's material facts (scarcity, danger, the core rule).
5. Draw the constraint that limits the plot's easy outs. Decision point: if magic/tech could solve the climax offhand, add a limit now (range, price, taboo).
6. Sketch the power map: who rules, who resists, what they trade. Conflict lives in the gaps between factions.
7. Decide the iceberg ratio — build deep, reveal shallow. Show rules through consequence in scene, never as a lecture.

## Example

Premise: "What if water could store memory and be drunk?" Core rule: drinking someone's saved water gives you their memories — but overwrites a day of your own (hard cost). Second-order: memory-water is currency; the poor sell their childhoods; forgetting is a luxury of the rich. Culture: marriages sealed by exchanging a vial; lying is "pouring clean water." Constraint: you can't re-drink a memory you've overwritten (no undo). Power map: the Cistern Guild hoards archives; smugglers sell stolen lives.

## Pitfalls

- Powers with no cost — they flatten tension and invite plot holes.
- Culture bolted on as flavor instead of derived from the world's material facts.
- Info-dumping lore in narration instead of revealing it through consequence.
- No limiting constraint, so readers ask "why didn't they just use the magic?"

## Output format

```
PREMISE QUESTION: <what if ...>
CORE RULE: <...>   HARD COST: <...>
SECOND-ORDER (×3): who profits <...> | who suffers <...> | what's illegal <...>
CULTURE (from constraint): custom <...> | taboo <...> | idiom <...>
PLOT-LIMITING CONSTRAINT: <...>
POWER MAP: rulers <...> | resistance <...> | the trade between <...>
ICEBERG: built <deep> / revealed <shallow, via ...>
```