Claude Code skills
35frameworks from history’s greatest guides.
Each skill captures one specific framework, principle, or method from the source biography or primary text — Rockefeller’s Ledger A, Musk’s Five-Step Algorithm, Franklin’s 13 Virtues, Alexander’s decisive point doctrine, and more. Install once, then invoke any slash command when you’re working through a decision they would have something to say about.
One marketplace, one plugin per guide. Install only who you want.
/plugin marketplace add adamtpang/summon.guide
/plugin install elon # or franklin, rockefeller, alexander,
# deutsch, lee-kuan-yew, marcus-aureliusAfter install, invoke /elon:elon to channel the full mindset, or a specific framework like /elon:first-principles. Source on GitHub. Built in homage to slavingia/skills — Sahil did this for one book; we do it for one guide at a time.
Channel Rockefeller
/rockefeller:rockefellerOpen Ledger A. Find the drop of solder. Tithe before anything else. Move generously, execute ruthlessly.
When to use: Working through money discipline, recurring spend, unit economics, a market panic, or any moment where iron patience beats aggression.
Source: Titan by Ron Chernow
Ledger A Discipline
/rockefeller:ledgerTrack every penny. Find your drop of solder. Tithe before anything else.
When to use: Setting up bookkeeping habits, auditing recurring spend, looking for unit-economic waste, or imposing financial discipline on a chaotic operation.
Source: Titan by Ron Chernow — Chapter 3 (Ledger A) and Chapter 25 (the dimes and daily habits)
Crisis as Opportunity
/rockefeller:crisisBuy when blood runs in the streets. Pre-commit your buy list. Move generously, execute ruthlessly.
When to use: A market panic, downturn, layoff wave, or competitor collapse — and you have cash, conviction, or both.
Source: Titan by Ron Chernow — Chapter 12 (Panic of 1873) and Chapter 6 (Cleveland Massacre)
Channel Franklin
/franklin:franklinTrack behavior, not intent. Build structures, not just resolutions. Persuade through charm. Make the project useful.
When to use: Self-improvement, building a habit-tracking system, starting a mastermind, drafting a public letter, or any decision where persuasion beats force.
Source: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
13 Virtues System
/franklin:thirteen-virtuesOne virtue per week, on rotation. Mark every failure. Run 4 cycles a year.
When to use: Building self-discipline, fixing a recurring personal flaw, designing a habit tracker, or operationalizing 'becoming a better person.'
Source: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — Part 2 (the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection)
Build a Junto
/franklin:junto12 people, Friday evenings, fixed agenda, one tangible artifact. Compounds for life.
When to use: Starting a mastermind, founders circle, weekly dinner, study group, or any structured peer-improvement society.
Source: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson — Chapter 5 — Franklin's Junto society, founded 1727
Channel Elon
/elon:elonQuestion every requirement. Decompose to first principles. Run the five-step algorithm in order. Apply schedule pressure. The best part is no part.
When to use: Engineering problems, 'this is impossible' claims, long quoted timelines, manufacturing or process bloat, supplier cost audits, or any moment needing bias-to-action under pressure.
Source: Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
First-Principles Reasoning
/elon:first-principlesDecompose to physics, materials, and hours. Compute the irreducible floor. Attack the process around the constraint.
When to use: You are quoted an 'industry standard' cost, told a long timeline, or stuck behind 'this is how it has always been done.'
Source: Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson — Chapter 2 (the rocket-cost decomposition that founded SpaceX)
Five-Step Algorithm
/elon:five-step-algorithmQuestion, delete, simplify, accelerate, automate — in that order. The order is the algorithm.
When to use: Simplifying a workflow, killing process bloat, speeding up cycle time, or rebuilding an operation from scratch.
Source: Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson — Chapter 30 (Musk's manufacturing algorithm, articulated to Tesla and SpaceX teams)
The Idiot Index
/elon:idiot-indexFinished cost / raw material cost. Above 10x means you are paying for inefficiency, not value.
When to use: Auditing supplier prices, vendor contracts, build-vs-buy decisions, or any 'why does this cost so much' question.
Source: Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson — Chapter 47 (Musk asks engineers for the idiot index on every part)
Channel Alexander
/alexander:alexanderLead from the front. Concentrate at the decisive point. Strike before they react. Refuse the diversion. Magnanimous in victory, ruthless about the line.
When to use: Leading a team into something hard, deciding where to concentrate scarce resource, facing a competitor with more raw power, or wondering whether to delegate what the team needs to see you personally absorb.
Source: Plutarch's Life of Alexander and Arrian's Anabasis Alexandri
Lead From the Front
/alexander:lead-from-frontShare the privation you ask of your team. Find your helmet-of-water gesture. Be wounded in their direction.
When to use: You are asking the team to absorb something hard — late nights, a pay cut, a risky pivot — and you need them to follow.
Source: Life of Alexander by Plutarch and The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian — Plutarch on the Gedrosian Desert; Arrian on Alexander leading the cavalry charge at Granicus
Concentrate at the Decisive Point
/alexander:decisive-pointList every front. Identify the one whose win makes the rest moot. Concentrate force. Strike before they react. Refuse the diversion.
When to use: You are spread across too many fronts, facing a competitor with more raw power, or struggling to focus.
Source: The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian — The Battle of Gaugamela, 331 BC
Channel Deutsch
/deutsch:deutschExamine the question's hidden assumptions. Test explanations by trying to vary them. Reject 'just so' stories. Apply the Principle of Optimism.
When to use: Evaluating a theory, debating an interpretation, detecting bullshit, or paralyzed by the claim that something is just the way things are.
Source: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
Hard-to-Vary Explanations
/deutsch:good-explanationsA good explanation is hard to vary while still accounting for what it explains. Test every detail by trying to swap it.
When to use: Evaluating a theory, debating an interpretation, choosing between competing hypotheses, or detecting bullshit.
Source: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch — Chapter 1 (the seasons example: Persephone vs axial tilt)
The Principle of Optimism
/deutsch:principle-of-optimismAll evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. All problems are soluble unless forbidden by physics.
When to use: Paralysis from 'this is just how it is,' a problem someone declared impossible, or a moment of strategic pessimism.
Source: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch — Chapter 9 (Optimism)
Channel Lee Kuan Yew
/lee-kuan-yew:lee-kuan-yewStrip ideology. Run small reversible experiments. Steal what works. Pay competitively AND prosecute without exception. Think in decades.
When to use: Making a decision through an ideological lens, designing incentives, hiring senior leadership, or fixing a culture where rules get bent quietly.
Source: From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew
The Pragmatist Test
/lee-kuan-yew:pragmatist-testStrip ideology. Ask only: does it work? Define 'works' with measurable specificity. Kill what isn't producing.
When to use: You are debating a policy or strategy through an ideological lens (left/right, agile/waterfall, B2B/B2C orthodoxy) instead of through results.
Source: From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew — The pragmatist doctrine across his three decades as Prime Minister
The Incorruptibility Lock
/lee-kuan-yew:incorruptibilityPay competitively AND prosecute without exception. One lock without the other fails.
When to use: Designing incentives, hiring senior leadership, setting conflict-of-interest policy, or fixing a culture where rules get bent quietly.
Source: From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew — Chapters 13–15 — the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau
Channel Marcus Aurelius
/marcus-aurelius:marcus-aureliusApply the dichotomy of control. Take the view from above. Hold mortality close. The body is not you. Premeditate the friction of the day.
When to use: Anxious, stuck in resentment, wrestling with mortality or vanity, ruminating about what others think, troubled by the body, or asking what to do today.
Source: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Dichotomy of Control
/marcus-aurelius:dichotomy-of-controlSplit the situation into what's up to you (judgments, intentions, responses) and what isn't (everything else). Withdraw your peace from the second pile.
When to use: Anxiety, resentment, or spiraling about an outcome, another person, the past, or anything you can't directly move.
Source: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius — Book 9.6 and Book 12.26 (the dichotomy, from Epictetus)
The View From Above
/marcus-aurelius:view-from-aboveZoom out to the scale of a life, a species, an age — until the emergency is one dot in a vast ordered thing.
When to use: Catastrophizing, status panic, an offense that feels enormous, or a decision distorted by being too close to it.
Source: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius — Book 7.48 and Book 9.30 (the cosmic perspective)
Memento Mori as a Priority Filter
/marcus-aurelius:memento-moriIf I might be dead by evening, does this still deserve this much of me? Most grievances don't survive the question.
When to use: Procrastination, trivial grievances, over-investing in things that won't matter, or losing the thread of what's important.
Source: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius — Book 2.11 and Book 4.17
Channel Marc Andreessen
/marc-andreessen:marc-andreessenSoftware is eating the world. It's time to build. Strong opinions, loosely held. Read the wave you're in and push faster.
When to use: Deciding what to build, evaluating a startup or investment thesis, choosing how to think about a regulated incumbent industry, or fighting the pessimism that says technology can't make things better.
Source: Marc's essays at a16z.com (2011–2023)
Software Eats the World
/marc-andreessen:software-eats-the-worldIdentify the industries where the durable winner will be a software company. The incumbents' advantages are in the wrong currency.
When to use: Picking what to build, evaluating an incumbent industry for disruption, or assessing whether your own company is the new-wave or old-wave entrant in your category.
Source: “Why Software Is Eating the World” by Marc Andreessen (WSJ, August 20, 2011)
It's Time to Build
/marc-andreessen:its-time-to-buildReplace “what's wrong” with “what do we build to fix it, and what is stopping the build?” Bias to action against analysis paralysis.
When to use: Stuck in analysis, complaining about a problem, or watching an institution fail to do something obvious. Especially in regulated or “mature” sectors that have stopped shipping.
Source: “It's Time to Build” by Marc Andreessen (a16z.com, April 18, 2020)
Techno-Optimism as an Operating Philosophy
/marc-andreessen:techno-optimismTreat capability as the goal. Distrust framings that lower capability under the pretense of safety. Pessimism is fashionable and almost always wrong about technology over a 10-year window.
When to use: When pessimism, doom narratives, or institutional caution are framing a decision that should be evaluated on whether it raises or lowers capability.
Source: “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” by Marc Andreessen (a16z.com, October 16, 2023)
Channel Adam Neumann
/adam-neumann:adam-neumannMission compresses the round. Tribe before scale. Make the feeling of the product as carefully as the function. Watch unit economics or the story turns on you.
When to use: Building a brand, raising a story-led round, designing a community product, or stress-testing whether your narrative is a moat or a hallucination.
Source: Billion Dollar Loser (Wiedeman) + The Cult of We (Brown & Farrell)
Mission as Moat
/adam-neumann:mission-as-moatA commodity product wrapped in a real mission becomes a brand. The framing is the moat. Anti-pattern: a fake mission wrapped in marketing gloss is not.
When to use: When your product is commoditized on paper and you need a defensible differentiator, or when you suspect competitors are out-narrating you.
Source: Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman — Chapters 3–6 (the early WeWork pitch)
Narrative Arbitrage in Fundraising
/adam-neumann:narrative-arbitrageStory compresses the round — a great narrative does the work a hundred meetings would. Anti-pattern: every dollar raised on narrative carries an IOU to the next round. If economics don't catch up, the lever you pulled becomes the lever pulled on you.
When to use: Raising a round where the unit economics are nascent and you need to sell the future — or evaluating a competitor's pitch you suspect is narrative-only.
Source: The Cult of We by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell — Chapters 8–11 (Masayoshi Son and the WeWork raise)
The S-1 Reality Check
/adam-neumann:s1-reality-checkRun the test on your company today: if a stranger had to read your numbers in an S-1, would the story survive? Public reading is a different lens than private storytelling.
When to use: Pre-IPO companies, late-stage startups raising on private narratives, or any company whose growth has outrun its ability to explain unit economics to a hostile reader.
Source: The Cult of We by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell; WeWork S-1 (Aug 14, 2019) — Chapters 12–15 (the six weeks between filing and ouster)
Channel Seneca
/seneca:senecaTime is the one currency you cannot earn back. Anger is a brief madness — delay is the cure. Withdraw to find yourself. Recover the time you call lost. Begin at once to live.
When to use: Wrestling with how time is being spent, working through anger you don't want to be governed by, navigating a court (corporate or political) where flattery is expected, or designing a personal practice you can sustain.
Source: Letters from a Stoic + On the Shortness of Life + On Anger
On the Shortness of Life
/seneca:on-the-shortness-of-lifeLife is long enough if well invested. We make it short by selling it cheaply, hour by hour, to projects we have not chosen. Audit the hours.
When to use: Stuck in a routine you didn't pick, postponing the real work until 'later,' or watching a year pass without being able to say what you spent it on.
Source: De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life) by Seneca — §§ 1–3 and 7–10 (the audit of how time is wasted)
Letters from a Stoic — Daily Practice
/seneca:letters-from-a-stoicOne letter a day to yourself — pick one idea, work it out in writing, and end with what you will actually do about it. The Stoic technology Seneca used for three years on Lucilius works on you.
When to use: Designing a personal philosophy practice that survives more than a week, building a journaling habit that produces decisions instead of feelings, or wanting to study a tradition by walking it daily instead of reading about it.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Letters to Lucilius) by Seneca — Letters 1, 7, 16, 26, 47 (representative practical letters)
On Anger — The Cool Path
/seneca:on-angerAnger is brief madness. The best remedy is delay. Beg yourself this favor: do not execute what your anger urges. Do something else first.
When to use: Triggered by a message, a meeting, or a person, and about to respond from the trigger rather than from your considered judgment. Or designing protocols (for yourself or a team) that put time between provocation and reaction.
Source: De Ira (On Anger) by Seneca — Book I §§ 1–7 and Book II §§ 28–29 (the daily examination)