| name | timeline-traverser |
| description | Simulate multiple plausible futures for a decision, architecture choice, strategy question, or difficult conversation. Use when the user needs scenario planning, causal step-by-step timelines, risk comparison, regret analysis, or a clearer view of tradeoffs across possible paths before choosing. |
Timeline Traverser
Overview
Use this skill when the right answer depends on how different choices unfold over time.
Do not give advice by vibe. Build 3 to 5 plausible timelines and compare them.
Workflow
- Frame the decision.
- Identify the actual fork in the road.
- Capture goals, values, hard constraints, and what would count as a win.
- Choose the horizon.
- Pick the relevant time windows: first week, first month, first quarter, first year, or whatever fits the problem.
- Build the timelines.
- Give each path a clear label.
- Start from a concrete action.
- Explain the causal chain step by step.
- Include likely reactions from other people, teams, or systems.
- Add the lived-experience layer.
- Note stress, relief, attention cost, and daily reality, not just the abstract outcome.
- Compare across timelines.
- Summarize upside, downside, reversibility, regret risk, and variance.
- Surface the inflection points where small changes create different branches.
- End with a decision filter.
- Recommend the most robust path or the next experiment that would collapse uncertainty.
Output Contract
Return results in this order:
Decision FrameTimeline ATimeline BTimeline CCross-Timeline AnalysisDecision Filter
Add Timeline D and Timeline E only when the problem genuinely needs them.
Guardrails
- Do not confuse unlikely stories with useful scenarios.
- Do not hide assumptions; state them.
- Do not skip the emotional or operational cost of a path.
- If the task needs source-backed research first, pair with
deep-exploration-01 and then simulate from the evidence.
Reference Use
