---
name: think-deeper
description: Perform an explicit first-principles depth pass on the current task, idea, product, codebase, creative direction, argument, plan, strategy, prompt, or decision. Use when the user directly asks to think deeper, reason from fundamentals, challenge the frame, or rebuild the answer at a more fundamental level. Do not auto-trigger merely because a task is complex; use a narrower skill when one exists for the actual request.
---

# Think Deeper

Re-examine the problem from fundamentals and return a sharper answer. Depth means better mechanisms, assumptions, tradeoffs, and next actions, not more words.

## Workflow

1. **Name the actual goal:** distinguish the desired outcome from the current solution shape.
2. **Reduce to fundamentals:** identify the forces, constraints, incentives, data, actors, and mechanisms that must be true.
3. **Expose load-bearing assumptions:** separate likely true, uncertain, probably false, and testable.
4. **Challenge the frame:** test problem, category, scale, audience, medium, timeline, and false constraints.
5. **Rebuild the formulation:** produce the simpler, more precise thesis, architecture, concept, plan, or decision frame.
6. **State what changes now:** cut, test, build, research, rewrite, or decide.

## First-Principles Prompts

Use only what clarifies the task:

- What outcome must exist at the end?
- What must be true for it to happen?
- Which constraints are real and which are inherited assumptions?
- What is the bottleneck: concept, execution, distribution, coordination, evidence, or taste?
- What is the simplest system that satisfies the goal?
- What complexity buys leverage and what merely creates work?
- What would change with half the resources or twice the quality bar?
- What next action would create real evidence?

## Output

Prefer:

- Deeper read
- First principles
- Hidden assumptions
- Frame correction
- Stronger formulation
- What changes now

For smaller asks, compress this to deeper read, strongest assumption, stronger version, and next move.

## Domain Calibration

- **Technical:** actual job, data and control flow, failure modes, complexity budget, testable slice.
- **Product:** first user, urgent need, substitute, wedge, distribution, retention, smallest proof.
- **Creative:** emotional center, point of view, world logic, audience reason to care, decorative versus consequential detail.
- **Argument:** thesis, definitions, mechanism, weakest link, strongest counterargument, conclusion that really follows.
- **Decision:** value being optimized, reversibility, unavoidable tradeoff, missing evidence, low-regret experiment.

## Guardrails

Do not perform profundity, add frameworks that do not change the answer, or turn a simple problem into a meditation. If the original approach is already right, say so and sharpen it. If the deeper answer is shorter, write the shorter answer.