First Principles Thinking

Adapted from the supplied First Principles Thinking — The D.A.R.E. Framework prompt pack: Decompose, Audit, Recombine, Experiment. This is the structured workflow for exceptional cases; the everyday operating principle does not require loading this skill on every task.

Activation boundary

Explicit invocation is sufficient. Otherwise, use only when all three hold:

• A decision materially affects the outcome, architecture, cost, or reversibility.
• A foundational premise is unsupported, contradicted by evidence, or implicated in repeated failures; changing it could change the chosen approach.
• A focused lookup, ordinary inspection, or the active debugging/design/review workflow cannot adequately settle that premise.

Name the decision and suspect premise in one sentence. Task size, complexity, the words "critical thinking", and the AGENTS.md opening principle alone are not triggers. For example, repeated evidence against a core product premise may qualify; a typo, known bug fix, or implementation of an approved contract does not. Use this within the active task, without starting a parallel review ceremony.

D — Decompose

State the requested outcome and success criteria. Break the problem into its smallest useful components and show their relationships. Stop when another split would not improve examination. Keep decomposition separate from evaluation and solution proposals.

If a deeper objective appears, identify it as a hypothesis. Preserve the stated problem; ask before substituting a materially different objective. Continue work that does not depend on that choice.

A — Audit assumptions

Rank the premises by how much the decision depends on them. For each material premise, record its evidence, classify it as verified fact, convention, or unknown, and explain what removing or inverting it would change. Check evidence against primary sources where available; an unsupported claim remains unknown.

Separate chosen requirements from empirical claims. User constraints, safety boundaries, and approved contracts remain binding unless authorized to change; questioning their rationale does not suspend them.

R — Recombine facts

Build alternatives from verified components and binding constraints. Seek up to three structurally different approaches when meaningful alternatives exist; do not invent options to fill a quota. For each, identify its supporting facts, the convention it challenges, and its largest failure risk. Label every new assumption. Keep an existing solution when the evidence supports it; novelty alone is not a benefit.

E — Experiment against reality

For each viable approach, identify the smallest affordable test of its decisive assumption: concrete action, observable result, rejection threshold, result that keeps it viable, and what either result teaches. State which premise to revisit if all approaches fail. Survival of one test is not proof of the whole solution.

Run checks already authorized by the task. Propose experiments needing new authority; this skill grants no permission for prototypes, spending, external messages, deployment, or destructive actions.

Output and stopping point

Return a concise decision brief: outcome, decisive facts and assumptions, recommendation or unresolved choice, and the cheapest discriminating test with its pass/fail criteria. Distinguish observed results from proposed tests.

Stop when evidence supports the next authorized step, or when a specific missing fact or owner decision prevents choosing safely. Resume the active workflow; do not keep decomposing, generate speculative redesigns, or reopen settled decisions without new evidence or an explicit request.