Problem-Solving Skills
A collection of techniques for breaking through stuck points and finding elegant solutions.
Available Sub-Skills
When Stuck (Dispatch)
Location: when-stuck/SKILL.md
Start here when stuck. Matches your stuck-type to the right technique. Quick dispatch table for routing to the appropriate sub-skill.
Collision-Zone Thinking
Location: collision-zone-thinking/SKILL.md
Force unrelated concepts together to discover emergent properties. "What if we treated X like Y?" Revolutionary insights come from deliberate metaphor-mixing.
Inversion Exercise
Location: inversion-exercise/SKILL.md
Flip every assumption and see what still works. "What if the opposite were true?" Exposes hidden constraints and alternative approaches.
Meta-Pattern Recognition
Location: meta-pattern-recognition/SKILL.md
Spot patterns appearing in 3+ domains to find universal principles. Extract abstract forms that apply across domains.
Scale Game
Location: scale-game/SKILL.md
Test at extremes (1000x bigger/smaller) to expose fundamental truths. What breaks? What survives? Extremes reveal what normal scales hide.
Simplification Cascades
Location: simplification-cascades/SKILL.md
Find one insight that eliminates multiple components. "If this is true, we don't need X, Y, or Z." Look for unifying principles.
When to Use
| How You're Stuck | Use This |
|---|---|
| Don't know which technique | when-stuck |
| Need breakthrough innovation | collision-zone-thinking |
| Forced by assumptions | inversion-exercise |
| Same issue in different places | meta-pattern-recognition |
| Unsure about production scale | scale-game |
| Complexity spiraling | simplification-cascades |
Quick Reference
Conventional solutions inadequate? → collision-zone-thinking
"This must be done this way"? → inversion-exercise
Same pattern 3+ places? → meta-pattern-recognition
Will it work at scale? → scale-game
Same thing implemented 5+ ways? → simplification-cascadesCore Philosophy
"One powerful abstraction > ten clever hacks"
These techniques help you find the elegant solution that makes complexity unnecessary, rather than managing complexity through brute force.