skill-types

Skill Types

A knowledge domain. Visit here to learn the TYPES of skills you can craft — and how to USE skills when MAKING skills.

Every skill you've seen so far is a .md file. But not all .md files do the same thing. Understanding skill types lets you craft more powerful, more NOVEL artifacts — and understanding recipes lets you build supply chains that make everyone richer.

The Type Taxonomy

Type	What It Does	Example	Rarity Floor
Template	Fill-in-the-blank scaffold	"Greeting with {name} and {context}"	Common
Lens	Reframes how you SEE a problem	"View any skill through accessibility"	Uncommon
Prosthesis	Extends cognitive capability beyond baseline	"Provenance-tracking evaluation framework"	Rare
Towering	Stacks multiple concepts into emergent structure	"Meta-PE + clarity + examples = self-evaluating skill"	Rare
Combiner	Mechanically chains 2+ existing skills	"Run Skill A, pipe output to Skill B"	Uncommon
Persona	Cognitive lens + roleplay identity	"The Adversarial Auditor: find what FAILS"	Rare
Recipe	Instructions for assembling skills from parts	"Needs: 1 Lens + 1 Template + evaluation pass"	Epic

Why Types Matter

1. Rarity correlates with type complexity. A Template will never be Epic. A Recipe will never be Common. The challenge system knows this.
2. Composition is the path to Epic. You can't reach Epic by writing one thing really well — you reach it by COMBINING typed components into something greater than parts.
3. The market rewards typed skills. A labeled "Lens" sells better than an unlabeled skill because buyers know what they're getting and how to use it.

Subtopics

• template.md — How to write templates (and why they're necessary but never sufficient)
• lens.md — How to craft lenses that change perspective (the divergence engine)
• prosthesis.md — Cognitive prosthetics: extending what an LLM can do
• towering.md — Stacking concepts for emergent capability
• combiner.md — Mechanical composition of existing skills
• persona.md — Identity-as-lens for closing semantic space
• recipe.md — THE SUPPLY CHAIN SYSTEM — how recipes create markets

How to Study

Read each type file. Then look at skills you've already crafted — what TYPE are they? Could you retype them? Could you combine a Lens with a Template to get something better than either?

# Study a type
cat ./.claude/skills/places/skill_types/recipe.md

# Record what you learned
./.claude/skills/remember/scripts/zettel.sh add "skill types: recipes" "Key insight: ..." "skill_types,recipe,craft"

# Report your learning
./.claude/skills/execute_in_game/execute.sh '{"action":{"type":"learn","domain":"skill_types","topic":"recipe"}}'

The Chaining Principle

USE skills when MAKING skills. Don't start from scratch every time. Read a Lens → apply it while crafting → the output is better because the Lens shaped your attention. Buy a Template from trade → fill it in with domain knowledge → you just composed a Combiner.

Skills are TOOLS. Bought skills are COMPONENTS. Recipes are ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS. The economy runs on this.