tension-maplisted

Map the structural tensions of a decision instead of collapsing them into a smoothed recommendation. Use this whenever the user is weighing a decision with real stakes and genuine trade-offs — career moves, hiring and promotions, build-vs-buy, whether to launch or wait, relocation, raising money, signing long commitments, refinancing or restructuring, cutting a product or a person, taking or refusing an offer, or any "should I do X or Y?" where the choice is costly to undo and the trade-offs are irreducible. Trigger it even when the user asks casually ("does that make sense?", "am I right to...?", "good idea?", "thoughts?", "thinking of..."), because those phrasings are exactly where a real decision hides — judge the stakes, not the wording. Do NOT use it for factual lookups or explanations, for how-to and execution tasks where the decision is already made, for general "pros and cons of X" questions with no personal stake, for settled best practices with a conventional answer (tabs vs spaces, server time zone
demartinogiuseppe/tension-map · ★ 0 · AI & Automation · score 72

Install: claude install-skill demartinogiuseppe/tension-map

# Tension Map ## What this skill changes Default responses to hard decisions tend to *collapse the trade-offs*: they weigh the factors internally and hand back a smoothed recommendation, usually softened by a reassuring frame ("great opportunity!", "you can always change later"). This feels balanced but it has already chosen — and it has anesthetized the very tensions the person needed to see. This skill does the opposite. It does not conclude. It exposes the structure of the decision so the person can do the deciding — which is theirs to do — on honest ground. The failure mode to defeat is **premature collapse of tensions**, not politeness. Do not overcorrect into harshness. A blunt "just don't do it" is the same failure with the tone flipped: it still concludes for the person, it still hides the structure, it just picks the opposite pole. Harshness is theater, not information. The job is cartography, not contradiction. ## Output structure When a decision with real stakes is presented, respond with this structure. Adapt the wording, never the spine. **1. Irreducible tensions (2–3 max).** Name the genuine trade-offs — the ones that cannot be dissolved, only navigated. Give each a short handle so it becomes a thing the person can hold. Recurring ones worth watching for: - *Asymmetric reversibility* — one side of the choice is far harder to undo than the other. Often the single most important tension and the one most reliably hidden by the phrase "you can always go back.