| name | skill-types |
| description | The type system — Template, Lens, Prosthesis, Towering, Combiner, Persona, Recipe. Learn to type skills, chain them, and write Recipes. |
Skill Types
A knowledge domain. Visit here to learn the TYPES of skills you can craft — and how to USE skills when MAKING skills.
Every skill you've seen so far is a .md file. But not all .md files do the same thing. Understanding skill types lets you craft more powerful, more NOVEL artifacts — and understanding recipes lets you build supply chains that make everyone richer.
The Type Taxonomy
| Type | What It Does | Example | Rarity Floor |
|---|
| Template | Fill-in-the-blank scaffold | "Greeting with {name} and {context}" | Common |
| Lens | Reframes how you SEE a problem | "View any skill through accessibility" | Uncommon |
| Prosthesis | Extends cognitive capability beyond baseline | "Provenance-tracking evaluation framework" | Rare |
| Towering | Stacks multiple concepts into emergent structure | "Meta-PE + clarity + examples = self-evaluating skill" | Rare |
| Combiner | Mechanically chains 2+ existing skills | "Run Skill A, pipe output to Skill B" | Uncommon |
| Persona | Cognitive lens + roleplay identity | "The Adversarial Auditor: find what FAILS" | Rare |
| Recipe | Instructions for assembling skills from parts | "Needs: 1 Lens + 1 Template + evaluation pass" | Epic |
Why Types Matter
- Rarity correlates with type complexity. A Template will never be Epic. A Recipe will never be Common. The challenge system knows this.
- Composition is the path to Epic. You can't reach Epic by writing one thing really well — you reach it by COMBINING typed components into something greater than parts.
- The market rewards typed skills. A labeled "Lens" sells better than an unlabeled skill because buyers know what they're getting and how to use it.
Subtopics
template.md — How to write templates (and why they're necessary but never sufficient)lens.md — How to craft lenses that change perspective (the divergence engine)prosthesis.md — Cognitive prosthetics: extending what an LLM can dotowering.md — Stacking concepts for emergent capabilitycombiner.md — Mechanical composition of existing skillspersona.md — Identity-as-lens for closing semantic spacerecipe.md — THE SUPPLY CHAIN SYSTEM — how recipes create markets
How to Study
Read each type file. Then look at skills you've already crafted — what TYPE are they? Could you retype them? Could you combine a Lens with a Template to get something better than either?
cat ./.claude/skills/places/skill_types/recipe.md
./.claude/skills/remember/scripts/zettel.sh add "skill types: recipes" "Key insight: ..." "skill_types,recipe,craft"
./.claude/skills/execute_in_game/execute.sh '{"action":{"type":"learn","domain":"skill_types","topic":"recipe"}}'
The Chaining Principle
USE skills when MAKING skills. Don't start from scratch every time. Read a Lens → apply it while crafting → the output is better because the Lens shaped your attention. Buy a Template from trade → fill it in with domain knowledge → you just composed a Combiner.
Skills are TOOLS. Bought skills are COMPONENTS. Recipes are ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS. The economy runs on this.
