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…
Activate when: self-employed / K-1 / variable-income client planning quarterly 1040-ES; 'how much should I set aside?', 'will I owe a penalty?', volatile income year.
Activate when: someone says 'this argument feels off but I can't explain why', 'is this a real argument or just rhetoric?', 'what's wrong with this reasoning?', an argument relies…
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…
Activate when: user says 'I'm always firefighting,' 'I never have time to think,' 'everything feels urgent,' 'I can't get ahead,' or 'we keep pushing strategic work because of…
Activate when: matching a borrower to Conventional/FHA/VA/USDA/Jumbo/Non-QM; deciding fixed vs ARM; 'which program fits this borrower?'; borderline DTI/LTV/credit.
Activate when: user asks 'should we move first or wait?', 'is it too late to enter this market?', 'how long can they hold their lead?', 'what makes the first mover hard to beat…
Activate when: a freight broker must quote a lane and decide accept/counter/pass on a load or carrier rate; 'what should I quote', 'is this rate any good', margin vs…
Activate when: user asks 'should we use this old technology or switch to something newer', 'how do I know if a book is worth reading', 'this institution has been around forever —…
Activate when: user asks 'what will they do if we do X', 'how will competitors react to our pricing', 'how do I design this auction or mechanism', 'we keep ending up in a bad…
Activate when: a return has aggressive/uncertain positions (large Schedule C losses, high meals/vehicle, hobby-vs-business, real-estate professional status, R&D/ERC-type credits,…
Diagnoses whether a result that worked at small scale will keep working when scaled — by testing an idea against John List's five reasons ideas lose 'voltage' (false positives,…
Activate when: a product is 'a better X' but nobody gets it; 'people don't understand what we do', weak conversion despite a good product, choosing a category/competitive frame;…
Activate when: user asks 'why does everyone keep doing X when it's obviously bad for all of us', 'how do we get out of this race to the bottom', 'should we trust them not to…
Activate when: user says "I've been working hard but I'm not growing," development programs feel pointless, a leader has plateaued despite strong expertise, someone asks "how do I…
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…
Activate when: a freight broker must balance shipper and carrier interests and disclose their intermediary role; 'whose side am I on', margin transparency, conflicts between best…
Activate when: strategy results are consistently below target despite strong market conditions; a team agrees on a plan but results fall far short; diagnosing why execution broke…
Activate when: an importer has recurring, material duty spend; evaluating FTZ, duty drawback, first-sale valuation, bonded warehouse, or FTA use; 'are we leaving duty savings on…
Activate when: a founder is about to talk to customers/users to validate an idea; 'I asked people and they loved it', 'how do I run customer interviews', 'is there demand for…
In a common-value auction where all bidders estimate the SAME uncertain value, the winner is systematically the one who most OVER-estimated it — so winning is bad news that you…
Activate when: turning one-trip bookers into annual clients; building a client-for-life book; planning post-trip nurture; 'how do I stop starting from zero every year?'.
Activate when: someone says 'I don't want to lose what I have', a deal is stuck because a concession feels like a loss, a pricing or incentive change gets unexpected pushback,…
Activate when: preparing any return claiming EITC, CTC/ACTC/ODC, AOTC, or Head-of-Household status; onboarding a paid-preparer workflow; a reviewer says 'did we document due…
Activate when: someone says 'I knew it all along' or 'we should have seen it coming'; a post-mortem is blaming someone for not predicting an outcome; a team is reviewing a past…
Activate when: a decision is framed as 'X or not-X' but is really a spectrum; someone says 'we have to choose between A and B' and both seem to have problems; a debate is stuck in…
Activate when: deals stall on 'too expensive', 'not now', 'need to think about it', 'send me info'; a founder gets flustered by pushback; improving close rate.
Activate when: user is allocating capital or resources across a portfolio and wants to know where to concentrate; user says 'our average customer / deal / employee performs at X'…
Activate when: user says 'we need to pick up speed', 'why aren't we getting traction', 'when should we scale / raise / launch', 'our efforts feel scattered', or 'are we ready to…
Activate when: user says 'why aren't users doing X despite saying they would', or 'our survey scores are high but churn is high', or 'we shipped a feature that tested well but…
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;…
Andrew Chen's Cold Start Problem framework — atomic network definition with thresholds by product type, anti-peanut-buttering, zero tracking, escape velocity 3-force decomposition…
Activate when: user says 'I'm stuck and don't know why', 'I keep making the same mistake', 'my analysis feels right but I'm not sure', 'am I solving the right problem', 'I should…
Activate when: user says 'how do I level up my thinking', 'why do I keep copying others', 'I don't know what I don't know', 'how do I develop independent judgment', or their…
Activate when: user asks about US-China war risk or great-power rivalry; someone says 'can they avoid conflict' or 'is escalation inevitable'; analyzing geopolitical risk in…
Activate when: user says 'our change initiative is stalling', 'people aren't adopting the new way', 'we launched the transformation but nothing changed', 'how do we overcome…
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…
Activate when: user says 'what if,' 'let's reason through this,' 'imagine that,' or 'thought experiment'; a strategic decision is too risky or irreversible to test empirically;…
Activate when: a real estate agent wants repeat + referral business instead of chasing cold leads; 'where's my next deal coming from', building a sphere-of-influence / past-client…
Activate when: a real estate agent wants clients who refer and return; designing the closing/handoff experience, milestone moments in a transaction; 'how do I get more referrals…
Activate when: someone says 'I'm T-shaped' and you want to verify it; a team can't translate insights across functions; a person asks what career move creates the most leverage;…
Activate when: a founder wants customers to bring customers; 'how do we get referrals / word of mouth', designing a referral program, improving virality; loops, incentives,…
Activate when: user says 'we've tried everything,' 'think outside the box,' 'we need a breakthrough,' 'challenge assumptions,' or 'how might we'; a team keeps cycling through the…
Activate when: a listing isn't selling and the agent must decide list price or a price reduction; 'should we drop the price', 'how much and when', days-on-market rising, showings…
Activate when: user says 'explain this simply', 'teach me like I'm five', 'do I really understand this', 'what's the simplest way to think about X', 'what's missing in my model',…
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…
Activate when: someone says 'they're just like that,' an employee is being blamed for underperformance without examining their situation, a post-mortem is focusing on who screwed…
Activate when: a market drop has clients wanting to sell; framing performance reviews; onboarding risk tolerance; 'clients panic in downturns,' 'how do I keep them invested?'.
Activate when: user says 'we've come too far to quit', 'we can't waste what we've already spent', 'should I keep going or cut my losses', 'we've invested too much to stop now',…
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…
Activate when: user says 'we've hit a growth ceiling,' 'should we acquire or build,' 'we're growing but not sure we can sustain it,' 'what's our M&A strategy,' or a business has…
Activate when: user says 'we've always done it this way', 'changing now would be too disruptive', or 'no one is complaining so why change'; a team is slow to adopt a clearly…
Activate when: user says 'I know I should but I haven't', a team is stuck in analysis paralysis going in circles, you need to assess whether someone actually learned from a past…
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…
Activate when: user asks 'how do we prove we're high quality when they can't verify it', 'what credential or signal would work here', 'why is everyone spending so much on brand…
Cynefin sense-making framework categorizing problems as Simple, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, or Confused to select the right approach.
Activate when: 'we keep trying to change this and it reverts,' 'people know what to do but don't do it,' 'the training didn't stick,' someone hits a knowing-doing gap repeatedly,…
Complex systems and emergent behavior — chaos theory, fractals, neural networks, cellular automata, and computability.
Activate when: our KPI is going up but the real outcome isn't improving; people seem to be gaming the metric; we're about to tie bonuses or promotions to a number; an algorithm is…
Activate when: user says 'we keep investing but market share won't move,' 'why does nobody make money in this industry,' 'our competitor copied us again within a year,' 'we…