feynman

• SKILL.mdcore · 4,180 bytes

Press a decision you just made until you can explain it, or the gap where you can't is named.

## Goal

The moment after a choice is when understanding is cheapest to fake: you can restate an option fluently without having earned the reasons behind it, and by the time that gap matters the decision is load-bearing elsewhere. The Feynman test catches it — if you can't explain a thing plainly, you don't yet understand it. So no one hands you the rationale; a fresh critic that never made the decision presses for what you can't actually explain, and a shallow answer draws a narrower question instead of a pass. The result is a decision you can now explain under real pressure, or an honest flag that you can't yet.

## Workflow

1. **Trigger**: fire right after a decision is made — typically just after options were laid out with no argument for any, and one was picked.
2. **Restate, don't justify**: state the decision neutrally. Do not supply the reasoning behind it, and do not let the user borrow reasoning that was never actually given.
3. **Isolate the critic**: hand the decision — not any reasoning — to a fresh, context-free sub-session that never watched the decision get made. Have it press for gaps: what a skeptical outsider would ask, what is assumed but unstated, what would have to be true for the choice to hold.
4. **Return one gap at a time**: give the user the sharpest unresolved gap and ask them to explain it in their own words. Never batch gaps into a checklist.
5. **Judge the explanation**: if the answer actually resolves the gap, close it and move on. If it restates the question, deflects, or leans on authority ("the agent suggested it") instead of reasoning, do not accept it.
6. **Narrow, don't repeat**: on a shallow answer, don't ask the same question again — narrow to the exact part that stayed vague and ask that. Keep narrowing each round; never widen back to a generic "are you sure?"