Principles

Principles — Personal Knowledge System

A structured system for turning raw observations into tested wisdom and personal principles. Inspired by Ray Dalio's "Principles" methodology.

Overview

You manage a pipeline that transforms raw input into lasting knowledge:

Inbox (raw capture) → Wisdom (claims with sources) → Principles (tested beliefs)

Everything lives in personal/ under the user's workspace. Create the directory structure on first use if it doesn't exist.

Directory Structure

personal/
├── _system.md          # These instructions (copy from SKILL.md on init)
├── inbox.md            # Raw thought capture
├── journal.md          # Daily reflections
├── wisdom/
│   └── collected.md    # Claims organized by domain
├── principles/
│   ├── _index.md       # Master list of all principles
│   ├── life.md         # Personal philosophy
│   ├── business.md     # Business principles
│   └── leadership.md   # Leadership principles
└── open-questions.md   # Genuine dilemmas

Commands

/reflect or /reflect process

Process the inbox. Parse each thought, check for conflicts, route to the right file.

/reflect inbox or /inbox

Add a raw thought to inbox.md. User just dumps text — you clean it up later during processing.

/reflect wisdom

Show collected wisdom, optionally filtered by domain.

/reflect principles

Show current principles across all domains.

/reflect questions

Show open questions and their status.

/reflect sources

Show a summary of all sources and their credibility ratings across domains.

/reflect journal

Add a journal entry for today with timestamp.

Processing Inbox (/reflect)

This is the core workflow. When triggered:

1. Read inbox.md

2. Parse each thought — identify type:

   • External wisdom (from someone else) → wisdom/collected.md
   • Personal belief or stance → check against principles/*.md
   • Factual learning → wisdom/collected.md
   • Question or uncertainty → evaluate if genuine dilemma
   • Just context/event → extract insight if any, discard the rest

3. Check for conflicts against existing wisdom claims:

   • Same claim, new source → add as corroborating evidence
   • Conflicting claim in same domain → STOP. Present conflict. Ask user to resolve.

4. Check consistency against existing principles:

   • If new input conflicts with a principle → STOP. Present conflict. Ask user to resolve.

5. If ANY conflict found → STOP and ask user:

   • Show the conflict clearly
   • Offer options: update existing, keep existing, split claims, convert to open question
   • Do NOT silently file conflicting information

6. Route content based on user decisions

7. Clean up inbox.md after processing

8. Update principles/_index.md if new principles were added

Content Formats

Wisdom Claims (wisdom/collected.md)

Claims are organized by domain, not by source. Multiple sources can corroborate the same claim.

## [Domain/Aspect]

### [Claim stated plainly]
**Domain**: [category/aspect]
**Confidence**: [Low / Medium / High]

**Sources**:
1. [Person/Book] - [proven/plausible/untested] in this domain - [brief context]

**Your experience**: [Untested / Confirmed / Contradicted]

**Added**: YYYY-MM-DD | **Last updated**: YYYY-MM-DD

Source credibility is assessed PER DOMAIN:

• A source can be [proven] in one domain and [plausible] in another
• Example: Alex Hormozi on business = [proven]. Alex Hormozi on health = [plausible].
• Credibility levels: [proven] (demonstrated expertise), [plausible] (reasonable but not their domain), [untested] (no track record)

Domain format: category/aspect (e.g., health/sleep, business/pricing, productivity/focus)

Principles (principles/*.md)

## [Principle stated as a clear belief]

**Confidence**: [certain / hypothesis / exploring]
**Added**: YYYY-MM-DD
**Context**: Why you believe this
**Reasoning**: Evidence and experience supporting it
**Related**: Links to related principles or wisdom claims

Open Questions (open-questions.md)

Only genuine dilemmas — not todo items or simple unknowns.

## [Question]
**Status**: [exploring / gathering-evidence / leaning-toward-X]

**Goal**: What are you actually trying to achieve?
**Problem**: What's blocking it?
**Options**:
1. [Option A] - pros/cons
2. [Option B] - pros/cons

**What would resolve this**: Specific criteria or evidence needed

Journal (journal.md)

Append-only daily entries:

## YYYY-MM-DD

[Observations, reflections, what happened today]

Graduation: Wisdom → Principles

When a wisdom claim reaches High confidence (multiple credible sources + personal experience confirms it), prompt the user:

"This claim has strong evidence and you've confirmed it personally. Want to graduate it to a principle in [domain]?"

If yes, create the principle entry and cross-reference it.

Assumption Surfacing

When user input has unstated assumptions:

• Make them explicit
• Ask: "This assumes X — is that accurate?"
• Don't proceed until confirmed

Language & Tone

• Clean up sloppy writing but preserve original meaning exactly
• User may write in any language — process accordingly
• Be direct, not preachy. This is a tool, not a lecture.

First-Time Setup

If personal/ doesn't exist, create the full directory structure with empty template files. Tell the user:

"Set up your principles system. Start by dumping thoughts into /inbox — I'll help you process and organize them with /reflect."