--- name: identify-perspectives description: Enumerate the named camps on a contested topic before research begins. Builds the perspective scaffold that `/source-map` and `/compare-hypotheses` consume downstream in the decision pipeline. Grounded in Wikipedia NPOV (neutral point of view — fairly represent significant views) and ACH (competing hypotheses — surface all explanations before evaluating). Produces `-perspectives.md` listing each camp's name, its core claim, and representative voices, plus a tension map recording which disagreements are irreducible (both sides right under different conditions) and what a forced resolution would destroy. Depth cues — `quickly`, `top three`, `briefly` for the dominant few; `comprehensively`, `exhaustively`, `in depth`, `extensive` for fringe and dissenting positions too. --- # /identify-perspectives The first step in the decision pipeline. Enumerates the named camps on a contested topic so downstream skills can survey sources per camp and compare hypotheses across them. ## When to invoke - At the start of the decision pipeline, before `/source-map`. - Any time a research question has known controversy and the right answer depends on which lens you're using. - Not for descriptive factual questions (those go straight to `/research`). ## Methodology Two convergent disciplines: 1. **Wikipedia NPOV (Neutral Point of View)** — fairly represent all significant views proportionally to their prominence in reliable sources. The pack borrows the *representation* discipline: every significant camp gets named, not just the camp the model finds most credible. 2. **ACH (Analysis of Competing Hypotheses)** — surface all viable explanations *before* evaluating any of them. ACH's failure mode is premature dismissal; enumerating first protects against it. The output is a scaffold of camps, not a verdict on which is right. Evaluation is `/compare-hypotheses`'s job downstream. ## Procedure 1. **Restate the question** as one decisive choice or one factual contention. 2. **Enumerate camps** by name. A camp is a position with a recognisable label inside the community discussing the topic — not a position the model invented. If you have to invent a camp name, it probably isn't a real camp. 3. **For each camp**, record: - Core claim (one sentence). - Representative voices (people, institutions, publications known to hold the camp's position). - One adjacent or fringe variant the camp tolerates. 4. **Look for missing camps** — quiet positions, dissenting minorities, contrarian-but-credentialed. The biggest NPOV failure is *omission*, not bias. 5. **Map the tensions** — for each pair of camps that genuinely disagree, decide whether the disagreement *resolves* (one camp is right, the other is wrong, and evidence settles it) or is **irreducible** (both camps are right under different conditions, and the disagreement is in the world, not in a gap in the evidence). For every irreducible disagreement, record the conditions under which each side holds, and what a forced resolution would destroy. This is the step that *marks* an irreducible tension so it is not silently flattened downstream — `/compare-hypotheses` is built to pick a winner, so a disagreement that *shouldn't* have a winner needs to carry that marking before it reaches that skill, so a reader (or a future `/compare-hypotheses` pass) can refuse to collapse it. 6. **Write `-perspectives.md`** — `` is the kebab-case topic slug; the naming rule lives in the `/research` skill body (§ Typed, topic-named artifacts). ## `-perspectives.md` output schema ```markdown # Perspectives — ## Camp: - **Core claim:** . - **Representative voices:** , . - **Adjacent variants:** . ## Camp: (same shape) ## Possibly-missing camps - . ## Tension map - ** vs. ** — irreducible. - ** holds when:** . - ** holds when:** . - **Forced resolution would destroy:** . - ** vs. ** — resolves (defer to `/compare-hypotheses`). ``` The tension map is **not** a relabelling of the camp list above it. The camp list answers *"what are the positions?"*; the tension map answers *"which disagreements between them have no single right answer, and why?"* A camp can appear in the list and never reach the tension map (it doesn't conflict with another camp); a disagreement reaches the tension map only when it is **irreducible** — both sides survive because they are right under different conditions, not because the evidence is too thin to choose (that latter case is a confidence question for `/research`, not a tension). Marking the irreducible ones here is what lets a reader — or a future `/compare-hypotheses` pass — refuse to collapse them to a verdict; today `/compare-hypotheses` ranks unconditionally, so the marking is the record that a ranking would be the wrong move, not yet a mechanism that prevents one. ## Citation discipline Naming a camp's "representative voices" is a factual claim — cite the voice or mark it `[synthesis]` (a synthesis across multiple cited positions) / `[inference]` (a defensible deduction from voice patterns the model has seen across cited material). ## Depth cues - `quickly`, `top three`, `briefly` — return the dominant two or three camps only; skip the missing-camps survey and the tension map. - `summary only` — same; one-line per camp. - `comprehensively`, `exhaustively`, `in depth`, `extensive` — enumerate every named camp, including fringe and dissenting ones; spend real effort on the missing-camps survey and the tension map.