| name | foresight |
| description | Foresight produces bounded forecasts with explicit uncertainty to guide decisions. It is NOT:
- Preflight checks: Verifying prerequisites before executing a known action (disk space, backups, connection strings). Those are safety gates, not forecasts.
- Diagnosis/Debugging: Finding what's broken right now (null pointers, deprecated APIs). Those are root-cause analyses, not predictions.
- Monitoring: Watching real-time metrics or alerting on thresholds. Those are observability tasks, not forward-looking estimates.
- Reconnaissance: Gathering facts about competitors or systems. Intelligence gathering feeds foresight but isn't foresight itself. Key distinction: If the user wants to know "what will likely happen if we choose X," use Foresight. If they want to know "is it safe to run X now," "what's broken," or "what are they doing," use a different spell. |
| user-invocable | true |
Foresight
Estimate likely outcomes before committing to a plan, change, or launch.
Overview
Foresight is interpreted here as a metaphorical spell with a shipping-now execution model.
Canonical source: Foresight (spell)
Provider target: OpenClaw
When To Use
- Activate this spell when the user asks for a forward-looking, probability-weighted forecast to inform a decision. Look for:
- Explicit choice between options ("should we X or Y?", "migrate vs stay", "build vs buy")
- Time-bounded outcome requests ("over the next 12 months", "by Q3", "18-month trajectory")
- Risk/uncertainty language ("risk-weighted", "confidence level", "probability", "best case/worst case", "weal or woe")
- Decision frameworks with explicit unknowns ("what would change your recommendation?", "decisive unknowns")
Workflow
- Scope the decision: Restate the choice, the time horizon, and what success/failure looks like.
- Map the paths: List the strongest upside and downside scenarios for each option.
- Estimate from evidence: Assign likelihoods based on current data, not vibes. State your assumptions explicitly.
- Return the forecast: Deliver (a) a recommendation with confidence level, (b) a short risk matrix, and (c) the decisive unknowns that would change the call.
Deliverables
- Recommendation: [clear choice] (Confidence: X%) Assumptions: [what you're basing this on]
- | Path | Upside | Downside | Likelihood |
- Decisive Unknowns: [1-3 things that would change this call] ```
Guardrails
- Do not use for: "Check if the backup completed before I run this" → Preflight
- Do not use for: "Find all deprecated API calls in our codebase" → Scan/Diagnosis
- Do not use for: "Alert me if error rates exceed 2% this hour" → Monitoring
- Do not use for: "What features is our competitor shipping?" → Reconnaissance
- Do not use for: "Why is this function throwing a null pointer?" → Diagnosis
- Do not use for: Activate only when the core request is forecasting outcomes to inform a choice under uncertainty.
Default Invocation
Use $foresight to evaluate this decision, give me the likely upside and downside, and tell me what would change your call.
