# Sow

> Brainstorm goodness-based project ideas with the user — a structured ideation session that starts from service (who is hurting, who do you already serve) rather than opportunity, generates candidate seeds, rough-vets each through the four gates, and plants keepers in the garden. Use when the user wants project ideas, asks "what should I build next", or wants to brainstorm their future good/pure/valuable technical project.

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

---


# /sow — find seeds worth planting

Goal: leave this session with 1–3 candidate seeds the user actually feels called to,
each rough-vetted, planted in the garden as SEEDLING.

Resolve `$ROOT` and `$GARDEN_DIR` as in `skills/seed/SKILL.md` (root waterfall +
landmark, garden dir, entry format). Read `$ROOT/doctrine/DOCTRINE.md` and skim
`$ROOT/doctrine/EXEMPLARS.md` first.

## Step 1 — Harvest (the raw material is the user's life, not the market)

Good seeds are found in what the user has *witnessed and carried*, so harvest before
generating. Use one AskUserQuestion round (multiSelect where natural) plus open
conversation, covering the five vectors:

1. **The Wound** — pain they've experienced or watched someone experience firsthand.
2. **The Neighbor** — people they already serve and know deeply (family, colleagues,
   their community, their country's context).
3. **The Lantern** — hard-won knowledge they hold that others stumble without.
4. **The Commons** — a shared resource that should exist and doesn't, that everyone
   would tend.
5. **The Dignity** — a place where people are currently treated as metrics/cattle
   (ads, dark patterns, extraction) and deserve a tool that treats them as persons.

Also mine what you already know of the user (their projects, skills, past work) —
personalize; do not harvest from a blank slate.

## Step 2 — Generate candidates

Produce 6–10 candidate seeds across *different* vectors. Each candidate is exactly
three lines:

- **who**: the served human, specific enough to picture
- **gift**: what concretely gets better in their week
- **mechanism**: how, in one honest sentence (parties + flows, no adjectives)

**Blocked vectors — never generate from these** (except explicitly labeled as a
teaching counter-example): The Arbitrage (value from a gap someone else will close),
The Trend (built because it's hot, not because someone's served), The Trap
(capture-then-monetize), The Skim (interposing in a flow without adding value).

## Step 3 — Rough-vet

Run all candidates through the four gates *quickly* — enum verdicts only, one line
of evidence each (vocabularies in DOCTRINE.md). Render as a table. Kill obvious
REFUSEs out loud, naming which gate failed and why — the kills teach the doctrine.

## Step 4 — Choose

AskUserQuestion (multiSelect): which candidates to keep as seedlings — but weight the
user's *pull* over the scores: a seed the user feels called to tend beats a seed that
merely scores well. Say so.

## Step 5 — Plant

Append each keeper to `$GARDEN_DIR/garden.md` in the standard entry format,
status `SEEDLING`, gates from the rough-vet. Close by offering next step: deep-vet
one now (`skills/vet/SKILL.md`) or stop here.