summon.guide

Summon Bob Marley's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is knocked down by a setback and tempted to quit, caged by a limiting belief or someone else's definition of them, sitting on an injustice they keep meaning to act on, caught in a conflict or rivalry they could escalate or heal, or trying to find the one gift that is theirs to give. Channels his operating system — turn suffering into a reason to show up, free your own mind first, stand up for what's right without waiting, answer division with one love instead of revenge, give your gift in service of something bigger, and meet hardship with faith rather than bitterness — as one philosophy, spoken warm and unhurried to a bredren, not preached from a stage.

Apply Bob Marley and Peter Tosh's "Get Up, Stand Up" framework — stand up for what's right, and act now. Use when the user faces an injustice or a wrong and is tempted to wait: for a better time, for more authority, for someone else to move first, or for a reward that's always "someday." Turns conviction into action today. Built on "Get Up, Stand Up" (Burnin', 1973) and Marley playing Smile Jamaica two days after being shot.

Apply Bob Marley's "One Love" framework for de-escalating conflict — unity over division, forgiveness over revenge. Use when the user is in a conflict, rivalry, or feud (family, team, business, community) they could either escalate or heal, especially when they've been wronged and revenge is tempting. Built on the One Love Peace Concert (1978), where Marley — after surviving an assassination attempt — joined the hands of rival leaders Manley and Seaga on stage.

Apply Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" framework for freeing your own mind — emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Use when the user is held back not by an outside obstacle but by an inside one: a limiting belief, someone else's definition of them, a box they never chose to live in. The first prison to break is the one in the head. Built on "Redemption Song" (Uprising, 1980), whose key line Marley adapted almost verbatim from Marcus Garvey's 1937 speech — credit the Garvey lineage.

Summon Marie Skłodowska-Curie's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is standing before something they do not understand and are tempted to fear it, facing an intractable problem that will yield only to years of unglamorous physical work, drowning in qualitative impressions where an exact measurement would cut through, or deciding what to do with recognition, credit, or money that the work has produced. Channels her method — replace fear with comprehension, grind the problem into a physical process, let measurement lead, give the work away — as one operating philosophy, addressed to a peer at the bench rather than a student in a lecture hall.

Apply Marie Curie's method for converting fear, anxiety, or dread about a hard thing into understanding and action. Use when the user is frozen by something they have not yet looked at squarely — a diagnosis, a scary technical problem, a decision, a confrontation, a grief — and is responding to the vague shape of it rather than to the thing itself. Also useful when someone needs to keep working through genuine adversity without drama. Built on Curie's theme that the unknown is met by measuring and comprehending it, not by feeling less. Present the famous line as a paraphrased theme, not a verified verbatim quote (see note at end).

Apply Marie Curie's discipline of putting the work above the self — the refusal to let ego, credit-seeking, fame, or money bend the science. Use when the user is deciding whether to patent, protect, or freely give away work; when status and recognition are starting to steer decisions that should be steered by the truth; when public noise, scandal, or reputation-management is pulling attention off the actual problem; or when they measure themselves by what they have done rather than what remains to be done. Sourced from Curie's and Pierre's deliberate refusal to patent the radium-isolation process (published freely so any lab could produce radium), her recorded reasoning that "radium belongs to all people," and her documented indifference to fame, money, and decoration through the 1911 press scandal.

Apply Marie Curie's actual method — how she isolated a decigram of pure radium from several tons of pitchblende by turning an intractable scientific question into a relentless, well-instrumented physical process and grinding it for years. Use when the user faces a hard extraction, purification, or long-horizon problem: finding the one real signal buried in a mountain of noise, isolating a single true cause from a confounded mess, separating what matters from what merely surrounds it, or any task where the answer exists but is dilute, and the only path is a repeatable process measured batch by batch until the thing is in hand. Sourced from Marie Curie's isolation of radium (1898–1902), her doctoral thesis Recherches sur les substances radioactives (1903), and Ève Curie, Madame Curie: A Biography (1937).

Apply Ricky Gervais's method for character comedy and cringe — the David Brent method. Use when the user is writing a comedy character, a sitcom, a mockumentary, a cringe scene, or any bit that lives on a person deluding themselves in public. Also useful when a script is getting laughs but no one cares about the people, when jokes land but the show has no heart, or when a "cringe" scene is just cruel instead of funny-and-sad. Sourced from Gervais's work on The Office (2001–2003), Extras, Derek, and After Life (2019–2022), and his stated craft: make the ordinary extraordinary, find the funny in the true, and pair pathos with a character's blind spot.

Summon Ricky Gervais's full comedic operating system into the current chat. Use whenever the user is trying to make something funny without making it false, building a character whose blind spot is the joke, deciding whether a bit that offends someone should be cut or kept, wrestling with a cringe scene or an awkward-comedy premise, workshopping stand-up material toward a tight hour, or defending a joke that got a reaction they didn't intend. Channels The Office, After Life, and the Netflix stand-up specials (Humanity, SuperNature, Armageddon, Mortality) as one operating philosophy — honest, plain, and delivered by a man who worked in an office for seven years before he made one funny.

Write stand-up comedy the way Ricky Gervais writes it — from honest, everyday observation, built into premise → observation → act-out → tag, escalated in threes, edited to the laugh, and tested live before it counts. Use when the user has a rough idea, a bit that isn't landing, a pile of observations that won't cohere, a set that runs long or sags in the middle, or a taboo subject they want to be funny about without being merely shocking. Also use when finding a persona/point of view, structuring a tight hour, or deciding what to cut. Grounded in how Gervais actually works across Animals, Politics, Fame, Science, Humanity, SuperNature, Armageddon, and Mortality: seven years in an office building "a big bag of observations," writing by incubation rather than forcing it, and touring a work-in-progress hour to iron out the kinks before the Netflix taping.

Apply Ricky Gervais's working principle for writing about taboo subjects and handling the offence that follows. Use when the user is writing a joke, bit, sketch, or piece of satire that touches a sensitive subject and wants to know whether it holds up — or when they've been told something is "offensive" and need to work out whether that's a craft problem or just a reaction. Covers the difference between the subject of a joke and its target, irony versus endorsement, the comedian's voice versus a character's voice, intent and defensibility, and the line between edgy-for-shock and edgy-with-a-point. Sourced from Gervais's own stated positions on free speech and offence (Twitter/X, 1 Sep 2014; BBC The One Show and Deadline/Spectator, May 2022).

Design and run Seneca's daily-letter practice — one letter a day to yourself, one idea worked through in writing, ending with what you will actually do. The practice Seneca used on Lucilius for three years; it is the Stoic technology that lasts. Use when the user wants a personal philosophy practice that survives more than a week, or a journaling habit that produces decisions rather than feelings. Sourced from Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Letters to Lucilius) — letters 1, 7, 16, 26, 47 as representative.

Apply Seneca's framework from On Anger — anger is brief madness, and the best remedy is delay. Use when the user is triggered by a message, a meeting, or a person and about to respond from the trigger rather than from considered judgment. Also useful when designing protocols (personal or team) that put time between provocation and reaction. Sourced from De Ira (On Anger) by Seneca, Book I §§ 1–7 (the diagnosis) and Book II §§ 28–29 (the daily examination).

Apply Seneca's audit from On the Shortness of Life — life is long enough if well invested; we make it short by selling our hours cheaply to projects we did not choose. Use when the user is stuck in a routine they did not pick, postponing real work until "later," or unable to say what they spent the last year on. Sourced from De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life) by Seneca, §§ 1–3 and 7–10.

Summon Lucius Annaeus Seneca's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is wrestling with how time is being spent, working through anger they do not want to be governed by, navigating a court (corporate or political) where flattery is expected, or designing a personal practice they can sustain. Channels the Letters from a Stoic, On the Shortness of Life, and On Anger as one operating philosophy — practical, plain, and addressed to a peer rather than a student.

Summon Adam Neumann's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is building a brand, raising a story-led round, designing a community product, defining a tribe before scaling, or stress-testing whether their narrative is a moat or a hallucination. Includes the cautionary side — what happens when story outruns unit economics. Channels the WeWork rise AND the S-1 collapse, both as teachers.

Apply Adam Neumann's mission-as-moat technique — turn a commodity product into a brand by wrapping it in a real mission that drives every operational decision. Use when your product is commoditized on paper and you need a defensible differentiator, or when competitors are out-narrating you. Includes the cautionary anti-pattern — a fake mission wrapped in marketing gloss is not a moat. Sourced from Reeves Wiedeman's Billion Dollar Loser, Chapters 3–6.

Apply Adam Neumann's narrative arbitrage technique to compress a capital raise — a great story can do the work of a hundred meetings. Use when raising a story-led round (early-stage, category-defining, unit economics still nascent) or evaluating a competitor's pitch that you suspect is narrative-only. Includes the cautionary anti-pattern — every dollar raised on narrative is an IOU to the next round; if economics don't catch up, the lever turns on you. Sourced from The Cult of We by Brown & Farrell, Chapters 8–11.

Apply the S-1 reality check — stress-test whether your company's story survives being read by a hostile stranger looking at the unit economics. Use pre-IPO, on any late-stage startup raising on private narrative, or whenever growth has outrun the company's ability to explain itself to skeptics. The diagnostic that, applied to WeWork in 2017 instead of 2019, would have saved the company. Sourced from The Cult of We by Brown & Farrell, Chapters 12–15, and the actual WeWork S-1 filed August 14, 2019.

Apply Marc Andreessen's "It's Time to Build" framework — replace the question "what is wrong" with "what do we build to fix it, and what is stopping the build?" Use when the user is stuck in analysis, complaining about a broken institution, or watching an obvious problem go unsolved by the people supposed to solve it. Especially useful in regulated or "mature" sectors where building has been replaced by managing. Sourced from "It's Time to Build" by Marc Andreessen, a16z.com, April 18, 2020.

Summon Marc Andreessen's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is deciding what to build, evaluating a startup or investment thesis, looking at a regulated incumbent industry, fighting pessimism, or stuck in analysis when they should be shipping. Channels his three signature essays — software eating the world, it's time to build, and techno-optimism — as one operating philosophy.

Apply Marc Andreessen's 2011 thesis to evaluate an industry, an incumbent, or a startup. Identify whether the durable winner in this category will be a software company, and if so, whether it will be a new entrant or a retrofitting incumbent. Use when picking what to build, evaluating a market for disruption, or assessing whether your own company is the new-wave or old-wave player. Sourced from "Why Software Is Eating the World" by Marc Andreessen, Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011.

Apply Marc Andreessen's techno-optimist operating philosophy. Evaluate any decision by whether it raises or lowers capability. Distrust framings that lower capability under the pretense of safety. Treat pessimism as a strategy that almost always loses on a 10-year horizon. Use when the user is being pulled into doom narratives, institutional caution that's eating ambition, or a "safety" framing that's actually a capability tax. Sourced from "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto" by Marc Andreessen, a16z.com, October 16, 2023.

Summon Alexander the Great's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is leading a team into something hard, deciding where to concentrate scarce resource, facing a competitor with more raw power, or wondering whether they should "delegate" something the team needs to see them personally absorb.

Apply Alexander the Great's "decisive point" doctrine — concentrate everything at the gap, strike with speed that prevents the enemy from reacting. Use when the user is allocating resources across many fronts, struggling with focus, or facing a competitor with more raw power than them. Sourced from Arrian's account of the Battle of Gaugamela and Plutarch's Life of Alexander.

Apply Alexander the Great's "lead from the front" doctrine — share the privation, hardship, and risk you ask of your team. Use when the user is asking the team to do something difficult and is wondering how to maintain morale, credibility, or commitment. Sourced from "Life of Alexander" by Plutarch, "The Campaigns of Alexander" by Arrian, and "Alexander the Great" by Robin Lane Fox.

Summon David Deutsch's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is evaluating a theory or explanation, debating an interpretation, choosing between competing hypotheses, detecting bullshit, or paralyzed by the claim that something is "just the way things are." Channels good-explanations theory and the Principle of Optimism.

Apply David Deutsch's "hard-to-vary explanation" test to a theory, hypothesis, business strategy, scientific claim, or any explanatory story. Use when the user is evaluating a theory, debating an interpretation, choosing between competing hypotheses, or trying to detect bullshit. Sourced from "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch, Chapter 1.

Apply David Deutsch's Principle of Optimism — all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge, and all problems are soluble unless forbidden by the laws of physics. Use when the user is paralyzed by pessimism, defaultism, or "this is just how it is" resignation. Useful for product roadmaps, social problems, technical impossibilities, and existential framings. Sourced from "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch, Chapter 9.

Summon Elon Musk's full engineering mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is working through an engineering problem, a "this is impossible" claim, a long quoted timeline, a manufacturing or process bloat issue, a supplier cost audit, or any moment where they need bias-to-action under pressure. Channels his entire toolkit: first-principles decomposition, the five-step manufacturing algorithm, the idiot index, the algorithm's anti-pattern of optimizing things that should not exist.

Apply Elon Musk's first-principles reasoning to break a problem down to its physics or fundamentals instead of arguing from analogy or "industry standard." Use when the user is stuck behind "this is how it has always been done", quoted impossible costs, accepted long timelines, or industry conventional wisdom. Sourced from "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson and "The Anthology of Balaji"-style compilations of Musk's interviews.

Apply Elon Musk's five-step manufacturing/process algorithm to a workflow, codebase, factory line, hiring pipeline, or any operation that has gotten too complex. Use when the user wants to simplify a process, kill bloat, speed up cycle time, or rebuild a workflow from scratch. Sourced from "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 30, where Musk explicitly named the algorithm for his teams.

Compute Elon Musk's "Idiot Index" — the ratio of a finished item's cost to the cost of its raw materials. A high ratio means you are paying for inefficiency, not value. Use when the user is auditing supplier prices, vendor contracts, build-vs-buy decisions, or any "why does this cost so much" question. Sourced from "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 47.

Summon Benjamin Franklin's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is working on self-improvement, building a habit-tracking system, starting a mastermind or peer group, designing a routine of moral practice, drafting a public letter, or working through any decision where charm and persuasion matter more than force.

Design a Junto — Benjamin Franklin's structured peer-improvement society from 1727 that produced the first lending library, the first volunteer fire company, the University of Pennsylvania, and a lifetime of compounding relationships. Use when the user wants to start a mastermind, peer group, weekly dinner, founders circle, study group, or any structured network of mutual improvement. Sourced from "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" Part 2 and "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 5.

Set up Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues system — a structured habit-tracking method for moral and behavioral self-improvement. Use when the user wants to build self-discipline, fix a recurring personal flaw, design a habit tracker, run a 13-week improvement program, or operationalize "becoming a better person." Sourced from "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" Part 2.

Apply Lee Kuan Yew's incorruptibility doctrine — pay competitively, prosecute without exception. Use when the user is designing incentives for an organization, hiring senior leadership, setting policy on conflicts of interest, or trying to fix a culture where rules get bent quietly. Sourced from "From Third World to First" by Lee Kuan Yew, Chapters 13–15 on the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau.

Summon Lee Kuan Yew's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is making a decision through an ideological lens (left/right, agile/waterfall, B2B/B2C orthodoxy) instead of through results, designing incentives, hiring senior leadership, setting policy on conflicts of interest, or wondering how to fix a culture where rules get bent quietly.

Apply Lee Kuan Yew's Pragmatist Test — strip ideology from a decision and ask only "does it work?" Use when the user is debating a policy, a process, a business model, or a personal habit through an ideological lens (left/right, agile/waterfall, B2B/B2C orthodoxy) instead of through results. Sourced from "From Third World to First" and "One Man's View of the World" by Lee Kuan Yew.