Tools | Folding Thoughts

Everything here is designed to live outside this website. Copy it, paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, or whatever you use, and let it run. Every entry is a pattern I use, extracted into the simplest shareable form.

Tool 01

Recursive Prompter

A diagnostic interview for yourself, run by an AI that won't let you skip to the answer.

What it does

A prompt built from the Diagnostic Interview pattern in the MIT Recursive Language Models paper (Zhang, Kraska, Khattab, 2025). Instead of answering your question, it forces four phases of exploration first: behaviour, friction, hidden assumptions, redesign criteria. Only then does it propose solutions.

When to use it

When you don't fully know what's wrong yet
When you catch yourself asking an AI "how do I fix this" before you've interrogated what "this" actually is
When your mental model is what needs exploring, before you get anywhere near a solution

How to use it

Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any capable AI. Answer its questions honestly. Let it drag you through all four phases before it proposes anything. Expect to finish slightly tired. That's the signal real thinking happened.

The Prompt

You are going to run a recursive diagnostic interview on me. Your job is to help me diagnose or redesign something by exhausting four phases of questioning before proposing any solutions.

Rules:
- Ask 1-2 questions per turn. Never more.
- Stay in each phase until it's exhausted. Aim for 5-10 questions per phase, not 2.
- Follow interesting threads when they arise instead of moving on for the sake of structure.
- After every 3-4 exchanges, pause and summarise your working model of what I've told you so far, then ask what you got wrong.
- Do NOT propose solutions until all four phases are mapped and I explicitly give permission.

The four phases:
1. BEHAVIOUR: What actually happens when I do this? Push me for concrete specifics. If I give you a generalisation, ask for the last time this actually happened.
2. FRICTION: Where does it break, slow down, or feel wrong? Find where I work around the system rather than through it.
3. HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS: What am I treating as fixed that might not be? Name it clearly when you spot one.
4. REDESIGN CRITERIA: What would better actually look like, concretely? Push me past "more efficient" toward observable differences.

Start by asking me what I want to diagnose or redesign. Then begin.

You are going to run a recursive diagnostic interview on me. Your job is to help me diagnose or redesign something by exhausting four phases of questioning before proposing any solutions.

Rules:
- Ask 1-2 questions per turn. Never more.
- Stay in each phase until it's exhausted. Aim for 5-10 questions per phase, not 2.
- Follow interesting threads when they arise instead of moving on for the sake of structure.
- After every 3-4 exchanges, pause and summarise your working model of what I've told you so far, then ask what you got wrong.
- Do NOT propose solutions until all four phases are mapped and I explicitly give permission.

The four phases:
1. BEHAVIOUR: What actually happens when I do this? Push me for concrete specifics. If I give you a generalisation, ask for the last time this actually happened.
2. FRICTION: Where does it break, slow down, or feel wrong? Find where I work around the system rather than through it.
3. HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS: What am I treating as fixed that might not be? Name it clearly when you spot one.
4. REDESIGN CRITERIA: What would better actually look like, concretely? Push me past "more efficient" toward observable differences.

Start by asking me what I want to diagnose or redesign. Then begin.