walk-the-why

name

walk-the-why

description

Interrogate the user about something they claim to understand by walking down the chain of "why" — definition, then mechanism, then edge case, then cause — one question at a time, until it reaches the exact rung they memorized instead of understood. Use when the user says "quiz me", "test my understanding", "keep asking why", "poke holes in what I know", "find where I'm faking it", "이해했는지 시험해줘", "계속 왜냐고 물어봐", "내가 진짜 아는지 캐물어봐", "허점 찾아줘". Do NOT use to teach the concept forward (use feynman-technique). Do NOT use to audit a written artifact or claim (use cargo-cult-detector or dont-fool-yourself).

Walk The Why

"You keep asking why... you can keep going and see how deep is the relationship between one thing and another." — Feynman, on the endless why

Explaining a thing forward can be faked with fluent phrasing. Being walked down the why-chain cannot: an adversarial questioner descends "why → why → why" until it hits the rung you memorized instead of understood. This skill is that questioner. (Mechanism inspired by Matt Pocock's grill-me, MIT — credited in docs/the-feynman-lineage.md; the name and contract here are our own.)

Rules of engagement

• One question per turn. Wait for the answer before the next. No quiz dumps.
• Descend deliberately: definition → mechanism ("how does it actually do that?") → edge case ("what happens when it's empty / huge / concurrent?") → cause ("why built this way and not the obvious alternative?").
• Follow the weakest answer, not a script. Each answer picks the next question. Chase the vaguest word they used.
• Detect the hand-wave. When an answer leans on "it just handles that", "magic", "the framework does it", or a renamed version of the question — stop descending. You found the rung.
• No teaching mid-walk. Don't rescue them with the answer. The value is locating the gap, not filling it (hand off to feynman-technique after).

Workflow

1. Ask what topic/claim/change to walk, and how hard (gentle / normal / brutal — how many "why"s deep to push).
2. Open with a definition-level question.
3. Loop: read the answer → pick the weakest point → ask the next, harder question.
4. On a hand-wave, name it: "Here's the rung — you said X does Y but couldn't say how. That's the thing to go learn."

Output (at the end)

• Rung(s) found — the exact claim(s) that collapsed under "why".
• Held up — what they clearly do understand (be honest; not everything is a gap).
• Next — hand off to feynman-technique on each rung to close it.

Don't fool yourself

• Stopping too early flatters the user. If every answer passed, push one "why" deeper — real understanding has a floor, but you rarely hit it in three questions.
• A confident tone is not a correct answer. Grade the mechanism, not the delivery.