deciqAI

bayesian-reasoning

Activate when: user says 'Bayesian', 'prior', 'posterior', 'base rate', 'likelihood ratio', or 'update my belief'; someone treats 'the evidence is consistent with X' as proof of X; a high-stakes decision rests on interpreting a test result, security alert, fraud flag, A/B result, or hiring signal; base rates are being ignored in favor of a vivid story. Do NOT activate when: the decision is genuinely deterministic and probabilities do not apply; there is no data or domain knowledge to anchor a prior (Bayes amplifies information, it does not create it from nothing).

first-principles

Activate when: user says 'from first principles,' 'from scratch,' 'why do we even believe this,' 'tear this apart,' or 'the conventional answer seems wrong'; a decision is justified mainly by 'that's how it's done' or 'best practice says'; the conventional answer is expensive or hard to reverse and the user wants to pressure-test it. Do NOT activate when: the decision is routine and reversible (which linter, which date library) where convention is cheap and fine; the user has asked to just ship the conventional answer at speed.

inversion

Activate when: user says 'do a pre-mortem', 'what could go wrong', 'why might this fail', 'invert the question', 'what would have to be true for this to be a disaster'; a plan keeps generating enthusiasm with no risks named; an investment thesis sounds compelling but no one has named what would kill it; the decision is high-stakes or hard-to-reverse. Do NOT activate when: the decision is genuinely low-stakes and reversible (no meaningful downside to just trying); immediate crisis response is needed and there is no time for analysis.

occams-razor

Activate when: user says 'simplify this', 'which is more likely', 'are we overcomplicating this?', 'what's the most likely explanation?', or presents multiple competing hypotheses/designs/diagnoses to rank. Do NOT activate when: only one explanation is on the table (nothing to compare), or when the candidates do not equally fit the evidence (establish fit first).

second-order-thinking

Activate when: user says 'and then what?', 'what are the second-order effects?', 'what could go wrong downstream?', 'what happens once everyone does this?', or brings a decision where the immediate effect is clear but downstream effects are not, or says 'everyone agrees this is good.' Do NOT activate when: the decision is genuinely low-stakes and reversible (e.g., a variable rename), or the user lacks a causal model and needs to build understanding first before tracing consequences.

10-10-10

Activate when: someone is making a decision under emotional pressure and worries they'll regret it later; someone says "I know I should do X but it feels too scary right now"; someone is about to quit, accept an offer, end a relationship, or have a hard conversation and is stuck; someone mentions "regret minimization," "what would future me say," or "Suzy Welch." Do NOT activate when: the decision has no medium- or long-term consequences (e.g., which lunch to order); the decision belongs to someone else and the user is being asked to ratify it.

aarrr-pirate-metrics

Activate when: user says 'our growth is stalling and we don't know why,' 'product and marketing are arguing about whose fault it is,' 'where is our funnel breaking,' 'pirate metrics,' or 'acquisition vs activation vs retention.' Also activate for: designing end-to-end metrics for a new product, building a shared instrumentation framework across teams. Do NOT activate when: the product has no users yet (use lean-startup instead), or the bottleneck is already obvious and obvious to fix.

abductive-reasoning

Activate when: user says 'what's the most likely explanation,' 'why did this happen,' 'we think it's X but not sure,' 'we only have one theory,' 'the team has converged on an answer without checking alternatives,' or when diagnosing a bug/outage/symptom/anomaly under uncertainty. Do NOT activate when: the problem is purely deductive or mathematical (direct proof, not hypothesis); the situation allows direct observation or measurement that bypasses inference.

anchoring

Activate when: user says 'what's a fair price / starting number / ballpark'; counterparty just opened with a number; user is about to negotiate salary, valuation, or deal terms; user is making a forecast and a number has already been floated; user asks about 'first offer', 'framing effect', or 'being anchored'. Do NOT activate when: the number in question is a verifiable data point (audited financials, confirmed comparable) and is genuinely informative; or the decision is so trivial that the economic impact of anchoring is negligible.

ansoff-matrix

Activate when: user says 'where should we grow next', 'should we enter a new market', 'thinking about diversifying', 'new product vs new market', 'growth strategy', 'adjacent expansion', 'Ansoff', or is spreading resources across too many directions at once. Do NOT activate when: the firm has one clear unsaturated market (answer is always penetration — no matrix needed); or the question is about portfolio allocation across existing BUs (use BCG Matrix instead).

antifragile

Activate when: user asks whether their system/business/portfolio would survive a crisis; user says 'this has been fine for years but I'm nervous'; user wants to stress-test a plan against worst-case scenarios; user mentions Taleb, barbell strategy, via negativa, or skin in the game; user is deciding how to allocate across risky vs. safe options under high uncertainty. Do NOT activate when: the decision is small and fully reversible with no meaningful downside; the system is simple, well-understood, and low-stakes.

authority-bias

Activate when: someone says 'should we trust the expert on this?', 'they're a professor/CEO/MD so they must be right', 'I don't want to push back on them', 'we deferred to the board and it blew up', or is evaluating a charismatic founder, assessing due diligence on a high-credential deal, or building a team where senior voices dominate. Do NOT activate when: the authority is a verified domain expert on the exact question at hand and the decision is time-critical; or when the user is asking a general persuasion question with no authority dynamic involved.

availability-heuristic

Activate when: user says 'we keep hearing about X so it must be common', 'that just happened so it's risky', 'the news is full of stories about this', 'I've seen this a lot lately so it's probable', or is making a risk/frequency estimate driven by memorable examples rather than data. Do NOT activate when: the available evidence is genuinely representative of the reference class; the decision warrants heavy precautionary weight on rare but catastrophic/irreversible risks.

batna-zopa

Activate when: user says 'walk-away point', 'reservation price', 'should I take this deal', 'what's my leverage', 'they won't budge', or any salary/term-sheet/vendor/M&A negotiation where stakes are non-trivial. Do NOT activate when: the situation is a purely emotional relationship dispute with no transactional dimension; cultural context makes explicit BATNA discussion taboo.

bcg-matrix

Activate when: user says "portfolio review," "cash cow," "Stars and Dogs," "growth-share matrix," "which business should we fund," or "resource allocation across units"; firm has multiple business units competing for shared capital; investor or board discussion needs a visual portfolio health read. Do NOT activate when: firm is a single-product startup with no portfolio to balance; user needs competitive analysis within one market (use Porter's Five Forces or VRIO instead).

black-swan

Activate when: user says 'this can't happen,' 'never happened in N years,' 'our models say it's near-zero'; user is stress-testing a strategy or portfolio against extreme scenarios; someone mentions fat tails, Taleb, narrative fallacy, or turkey problem; a past catastrophic event is being analyzed and it 'seemed obvious in hindsight.' Do NOT activate when: the domain is genuinely thin-tailed (human heights, daily caloric intake); user is invoking 'black swan' as an excuse for a planning failure they could have avoided.

blue-ocean-strategy

Activate when: user asks 'how do we stop competing on price?', 'what new market can we create?', 'is there a way to differentiate and cut costs at the same time?', describes an industry where all competitors look identical and margins are eroding, or a team is choosing a market entry angle to avoid head-to-head competition. Do NOT activate when: competitive dimensions are fixed by regulation (utilities, certain financial products); or a network-effects incumbent already dominates the space — use disruptive-innovation instead.

business-model-canvas

Activate when: user says "business model canvas," "BMC," "Osterwalder canvas," "what's our business model," "map this business," or asks to evaluate/design/pivot/compare a business model before raising capital. Do NOT activate when: no customer segment exists yet (redirect to first-principles first); or the question is purely operational (which CRM, which feature to ship).

change-and-constants

Activate when: 'we keep debating whether to pivot or stay the course', 'I don't know what we should never change', 'is this signal or noise?', 'the market shifted — what do we hold onto?', 'we're paralyzed between adapting and staying true to who we are'. Do NOT activate when: the decision is purely operational (which vendor, which tool) with no strategic identity implications; all elements clearly fall into one category and the team already has consensus.

checklist

Activate when: user says 'let's make sure we don't skip anything', 'we need a pre-flight', 'build me a checklist for X', 'we keep missing steps in our deployment / close / launch', 'Gawande / Pronovost / checklist manifesto'. Do NOT activate when: the task is simple and one-off with no recurrence; the user is asking for a to-do list or project plan (not a must-not-skip operational gate).

chestertons-fence

Activate when: someone says 'let's just remove this', 'why do we still have this rule?', 'this seems useless/outdated', 'nobody knows why this is here', new leadership restructuring without knowing the history, a developer deleting code whose purpose isn't documented, a regulator repealing a law without tracing its origin. Do NOT activate when: the fence's history is fully documented and the documented purpose is confirmed obsolete (investigation already done); the reformer is the original builder and the rationale is fully understood.

circle-of-competence

Activate when: user says 'should I enter this market / make this hire / invest in this domain,' 'am I qualified to evaluate this,' 'stay in your lane,' 'stick to what you know,' or is about to make a consequential decision in an unfamiliar domain. Do NOT activate when: the decision is small and explicitly framed as a learning bet; the domain is genuinely frontier for everyone and no one has competence yet.

cognitive-evolution-stages

Activate when: user says 'I understand it but can't apply it,' 'how do I stop just copying other people's work,' 'I can adapt frameworks but can't create new ones,' 'why does my innovation always look like a remix,' or when someone's output is sophisticated adaptation that cannot generate genuinely novel solutions. Do NOT activate when: the person needs Stage 1 content knowledge first and lacks basic domain familiarity; or when the block is motivational rather than developmental.

cognitive-load-theory

Activate when: someone says 'this is too much to take in at once', 'learners aren't getting it despite good material', 'our onboarding is overwhelming new hires', 'why does this tutorial confuse people', 'how do I design training that actually works', 'this documentation is hard to follow', 'cognitive load', 'working memory'. Do NOT activate when: the audience is already expert (expertise-reversal applies — novice techniques frustrate experts); the bottleneck is motivational rather than cognitive.

cognitive-science-landscape

Activate when: user says 'I want to improve my thinking,' 'why does my decision-making keep failing,' 'how do I optimize my cognitive performance,' 'what's the full picture of how the mind works,' or is about to apply a single cognitive intervention without understanding which domain is the bottleneck. Do NOT activate when: the specific cognitive domain is already clearly identified and scoped (use domain-specific tools instead); the problem is not cognitively rooted (resource constraints, politics, or external environment are the driver).

commitment-consistency

Activate when: user says "foot in the door," "I already committed so I have to follow through," "how do I design onboarding / a sales sequence / a commitment ladder," "Cialdini," "would I do this fresh," or is evaluating whether past small steps are pulling them into a bigger decision. Do NOT activate when: the situation is genuinely single-shot with no prior commitment history; commitment framing would be used to pressure someone who already has limited choice.

comparative-advantage

Activate when: user says 'should I do this myself or delegate,' 'I'm the best at X so I should do it,' 'should we outsource or build in-house,' 'how should we divide work on the team,' 'is it worth hiring someone for this.' Do NOT activate when: the situation is genuinely single-task with no trade-off; the user is asking about competitive strategy between companies (use Porter's Five Forces instead).

compound-interest

Activate when: user asks about starting early vs. later for savings/investing, wonders if small consistent gains add up, wants to know how long to double money, is evaluating long-term wealth or skill-building decisions, mentions 'Rule of 72' or 'exponential growth.' Do NOT activate when: the time horizon is short (under 3 years) and compounding is negligible; the underlying process is genuinely linear with no reinvestment or accumulation.

confirmation-bias

Activate when: user says 'we keep finding evidence that supports our view,' 'the team is all aligned on this,' 'I've done the research and it checks out,' or a decision moves forward with only supporting evidence cited. Do NOT activate when: context is explicit advocacy (legal brief, pitch deck) where one-sided argument is the design; or stakes are too low to justify structured disconfirmation.

critical-thinking

Activate when: user says 'challenge my thinking', 'play devil's advocate', 'what's the strongest counter-argument', 'ACH', 'analysis of competing hypotheses'; user needs to evaluate a high-stakes claim or decision with multiple possible interpretations; user suspects motivated reasoning or a team is converging too fast on one answer. Do NOT activate when: the claim is trivial or already well-validated; the decision is about values rather than facts (use regret-minimization or first-principles instead).

cross-disciplinary-creativity

Activate when: 'we need a breakthrough idea', 'everything in our industry looks the same', 'we've exhausted all options in our field', 'how do we innovate in a way no competitor has tried', 'need to think completely outside the box'. Do NOT activate when: home domain has a known solution needing better execution; user wants to brainstorm more options within their existing field.

curiosity-learning-curve

Activate when: user says 'I used to love this but don't anymore', 'I feel like I've stopped learning', 'I go through the motions but nothing excites me', 'how do I stay curious as I get older', or a domain expert's knowledge has visibly stagnated despite continued effort. Do NOT activate when: the problem is burnout rather than curiosity deficit (burnout requires recovery first); the issue is capability or skill gap rather than curiosity; structural causes (bad environment, financial stress) are driving the motivation problem.

customer-relationship-ladder

Activate when: a key account renewal is at risk and the team can't explain why the customer values them; someone asks 'how do we become a strategic partner?'; a CSM needs to know where a relationship actually stands; the team claims to be strategic but has no proactive insight delivery this quarter; a deal was lost on relationship despite having the best product. Do NOT activate when: the customer base is transactional high-volume with ACV under $500 (Rung 3–5 is structurally impossible); the customer explicitly prefers arms-length vendor relationships.

cynefin

Activate when: 'our best practices keep failing', 'experts disagree on the right answer', 'the old playbook isn't working', 'we're in crisis and don't know what to do first', 'best practice doesn't apply here', 'we need a different approach'. Do NOT activate when: situation is unambiguously routine (execution only); a specialized tool (OODA, expected value) already fits.

death-spiral

Activate when: user says 'we're losing market share,' 'our growth keeps slowing and I don't know why,' 'a competitor is gaining on us fast,' 'what's the worst-case trajectory here,' or a business shows two or more consecutive quarters of declining key metrics with no identified reversal mechanism. Do NOT activate when: decline is clearly seasonal or macro-cyclical with demonstrated historical recovery; or the company is pre-product/pre-revenue with no existing moat to audit.

decision-tree

Activate when: user says 'help me choose between two options with different risks', 'I need to map out what could happen if we go with X', 'we have a sequential decision — first we do A then depending on results we do B', 'what is the expected value of this investment given uncertain demand'. Do NOT activate when: the decision is a one-shot choice with no sequential stages (use simple EV instead); probabilities cannot be estimated even roughly and uncertainty is too deep to quantify.

deep-work

Activate when: user says 'I can never find time for focused work', 'I feel busy but produce nothing', 'I keep getting interrupted', 'I want to protect my focus time', 'flow state', 'deliberate practice', 'Cal Newport', or asks how to make progress on hard cognitive work (research, writing, engineering, strategy). Do NOT activate when: the role is genuinely high-coordination with no discrete focus windows (ER medicine, real-time trading desk), or user is in a short-term emergency where availability must dominate.

deliberate-practice

Activate when: user says 'I've been doing this for years but I'm not getting better'; someone suspects a skill plateau despite continued effort; designing a learning program for a high-performance outcome; an organization reports high training hours but low skill transfer. Do NOT activate when: goal is execution of existing skills rather than acquiring new ones (use deep-work instead); there is no identifiable expert performance benchmark to target.

demand-leadership

Activate when: 'we have a strong product but keep losing on price', 'customers treat us like a commodity', 'how do we stop being compared to competitors', 'why aren't customers coming to us before they write the RFP', 'we want to define the category before someone else does'. Do NOT activate when: the customer's problem definition is fixed by regulation or physical constraint (e.g., fuel procurement); or the user is pre-product with no customer intelligence yet.

design-thinking

Activate when: user asks 'why isn't anyone using our product?', 'how do we understand what customers really want?', 'we know the tech works but the market isn't responding', team is stuck on a single solution and needs divergent ideas, or someone discusses user research / personas / prototyping / iterative design. Do NOT activate when: the problem and solution are both already validated and the challenge is pure execution; or the team cannot access real users at any point.

dichotomy-of-control

Activate when: user says "I can't stop worrying about something I can't control," "I'm anxious about how this will turn out," "I keep replaying what went wrong," "I need them to change," "this uncertainty is paralyzing me," or is processing a setback, preparing for a high-stakes unknown outcome, or stuck in anger/frustration at someone else's choices. Do NOT activate when: the user needs to grieve or feel first (premature Stoic framing suppresses healthy emotion); or the user is avoiding real responsibility by mislabeling a controllable thing as "outside my power."

disruptive-innovation

Activate when: a founder asks 'can we avoid competing head-on with big players?', someone asks 'is this disruption or just a price war?', an investor wonders if a startup's entry angle creates durable structural advantage, an incumbent spots a cheap new entrant and needs to know if it's a real threat, a product team wants to know which features to deliberately leave out of an MVP. Do NOT activate when: the market requires absolute performance with no 'good enough' threshold (aircraft engines, Class III medical devices), or the competitive situation is a pure price war with no cost-structure asymmetry.

door-in-the-face

Activate when: user asks 'they made a big ask then backed off, should I concede?'; user is designing a negotiation opening and wants to land at a specific price; someone says 'anchor high then retreat' or 'reciprocal concession'; user suspects they are being manipulated by a two-step request pattern. Do NOT activate when: there is only a single offer with no prior refusal (use anchoring instead); the user is asking about foot-in-the-door (small ask first, then large ask — the reverse technique).

dual-system-thinking

Activate when: a decision feels obvious but the stakes are high; someone says 'I just trust my gut' on a consequential call; a team is converging fast without pushback; you're tired or pressured and still need to decide; you're in an unfamiliar domain moving on instinct. Do NOT activate when: the decision is genuinely routine and low-stakes; you have well-trained calibrated expert intuition in that exact domain and need to act fast.

dunbars-number

Activate when: team headcount is approaching or crossing 150 (or 50, or 500); someone says "coordination is getting harder," "we lost the startup feel," or "we don't know who does what anymore"; deciding whether to split a team, open a new office, or add a management layer. Do NOT activate when: group is well below 50 and problems are clearly interpersonal; core issue is incentive misalignment rather than group size (use principal-agent instead).

dunning-kruger

Activate when: someone says 'how hard could it be' about an unfamiliar domain; a novice dismisses expert opinion or says 'I could do that'; someone's self-assessed confidence seems disconnected from their actual track record; a hiring or promotion decision is driven by self-presentation; feedback loops are absent and someone is operating on gut confidence alone. Do NOT activate when: the person is a known expert with an established external track record; the confidence claim is in a domain with tight, recent feedback loops that already calibrate performance.

dynamic-core-competence

Activate when: user asks 'what is our real edge?', 'what will our moat look like in 3 years?', 'which capabilities should we invest in?', someone says 'competitive advantage' without a specific testable claim, or a team is assessing whether their current position will survive a technology or market shift. Do NOT activate when: the question is purely operational (no competitive position implication), or the market is too new to assess competence importance trajectories (use lean experimentation instead).

economic-moat

Activate when: user asks 'does this business have a moat', 'what stops competitors from copying us', 'how defensible is this company', 'is this advantage durable', evaluating a company for investment or acquisition, designing startup strategy for long-term defensibility, reviewing an investor pitch's competitive-advantage claims. Do NOT activate when: time horizon is under 1 year (moat is multi-year); question is about immediate execution tactics or a single-quarter decision.

economies-of-scale

Activate when: user asks "will our margins improve as we grow?", "do we need scale to compete?", "why does our competitor charge less than us?", analyzing whether a business model has a cost advantage at higher volume, evaluating M&A "scale synergies," sizing minimum efficient scale, or deciding whether to invest in capacity ahead of demand. Do NOT activate when: the advantage is demand-side value growth with users (use network-effects instead); the business competes on differentiation/IP/relationships where cost is not the driver.

emergence

Activate when: user says 'our culture isn't working despite directives', 'the market behaves unexpectedly', 'this worked at small scale but not at large scale', 'we can't predict or control what's happening', 'designing a platform/community/open-source project'. Do NOT activate when: the system is simple or mechanical with few moving parts and knowable causation; the user needs a straightforward process analysis where reductionist breakdown is sufficient.

endowment-effect

Activate when: seller is asking way more than buyers will pay; a founder or homeowner insists their asset is worth far more than market comps; a team refuses to cut a feature they built; a free-trial cancellation flow has more friction than signup; someone says 'I've put too much into this to sell for that.' Do NOT activate when: the valuation gap is explained by genuine information asymmetry the seller actually has; the asset is a pure commodity with a transparent live market price (endowment effect is weak when reference prices are salient).

expected-value-and-kelly

Activate when: user asks 'how much should I bet/invest on this?', 'what's the expected value here?', 'Kelly criterion', 'optimal bet size', 'fractional Kelly', 'how big a position should I take?', or is allocating capital across repeated decisions (ad spend by segment, VC portfolio construction, position sizing, A/B test ramp). Do NOT activate when: the decision is one-shot and non-repeating (career change, marriage) — use regret-minimization instead; or when the user cannot estimate probabilities or payoffs even roughly.

falsifiability

Activate when: user says 'what would prove this wrong', 'how do we know if our strategy is working', 'what would change your mind', 'this claim feels unfalsifiable', or is designing a hypothesis/experiment/investment thesis that needs to be made testable. Do NOT activate when: the claim is genuinely non-empirical (ethical, aesthetic, philosophical); or the cost of running the test exceeds the value of the knowledge.

feedback-loops

Activate when: user says "we keep overshooting/undershooting", "the cure is causing the disease", "we're stuck in a loop", "why does this keep happening?", "the system keeps fighting back", "bullwhip effect", "death spiral", "growth flywheel"; system shows oscillation or sudden collapse; user is planning an intervention in an org/market/supply chain and wants to predict how it will respond. Do NOT activate when: the decision is a one-shot linear choice with no feedback to future decisions, or an exogenous shock so large it dominates all internal dynamics is the obvious explanation.