| name | domain-ideal-whole-substrate |
| description | Foundational layer beneath PDE. Governs eight-strata substrate (ontology, lineage, constellation, gap-map, agent-fleet, production-stack, internal-magnet, external-contribution) plus four operators (selfish-altruistic loop, magnetic membrane, portfolio operator, reflexive operator) for any domain a flag pierces — chess, fitness, voodoo, education, design, taxidermy. Pre-instantiates engine reuse via Phase 0 portfolio audit and stretching-rack gap diagnosis. |
| license | MIT |
| governance_phases | ["frame","shape"] |
| governance_auto_activate | false |
| organ_affinity | ["all"] |
| inputs | ["domain-anchor","candidate-flag-pierce"] |
| outputs | ["domain-ontology","domain-lineage","domain-constellation","domain-gap-map","domain-agent-fleet","domain-production-stack","domain-attractor","domain-contribution-charter","domain-meta-study","portfolio-reuse-map","holes-fat-report"] |
| side_effects | ["creates-files","reads-filesystem"] |
| triggers | ["user-asks-about-new-domain","context:flag-pierce","context:portfolio-audit","context:stretching-rack","context:reflexive-study"] |
| complements | ["product-domain-engine","modular-synthesis-philosophy","market-gap-analysis","systemic-product-analyst","recursive-systems-architect","project-alchemy-orchestrator"] |
| tier | core |
| complexity | advanced |
| time_to_learn | multi-hour |
| tags | ["substrate","ontology","domain-modeling","portfolio-audit","eight-strata"] |
| version | 2.2 |
Domain Ideal-Whole Substrate (DIWS)
The substrate beneath every flag-pierce. Where Product Domain Engine (PDE) handles the product layer (logos / ethos / pathos / kairos), this skill handles the domain layer beneath. Every domain — chess, fitness, voodoo, education, design — composes from the same eight strata under the same four operators, with load distribution shifting by domain.
User's foundational question: "What elements, systems, structures, environments, agents so forth make the ideal whole (be it fitness, chess, or voodoo)?"
DIWS answers it as substrate, not as workflow.
What This Is
A substrate, not a workflow. PDE is a 5-phase formalization protocol that consumes a domain and produces a product. DIWS is what the domain itself is before any product gets built on top of it. PDE pulls from DIWS substrate; DIWS does not pull from PDE.
DIWS does two things PDE cannot:
- Cross-portfolio reuse — Phase 0 audits
~/Workspace/ for existing engines (3-tier taxonomy: domain / meta / consultant) before any new domain instantiates. Engine + skin pattern, not from-scratch every time.
- Stretching rack — Phase 0.5 runs the gap-map operator across N concurrent DIWS instances simultaneously. Surfaces holes (under-developed dimensions) and fat (redundant scaffolding) at portfolio scale, not just per-domain.
You invoke this skill when a flag has been pierced or is about to be — a friend's domain, a research interest, a consulting engagement, a side practice. The goal is to load the substrate ahead of any product-building work so that PDE / synthesis / cross-pollination diagnoses operate over filled scaffolding rather than empty types.
Invariants
These hold across every flag-pierce, regardless of domain:
- Phase 0 portfolio-audit runs BEFORE layer-1 ontology — never scratch-build what an existing engine can re-skin (rule 41: audit before building)
- Phase 0.5 engine-overlap board comes between Phase 0 and layer-1 — visualize candidate engines + gaps before scaffolding (rule 36: seed not specification)
- All 8 strata instantiate — even if a stratum is sparse for the domain (load shifts, layers don't disappear)
- All 4 operators fire on every instantiation — selfish-altruistic + magnetic + portfolio + reflexive (Tenet Protocol — both directions simultaneously)
- Layer 4 (gap-map) and Layer 8 (contribution) close as a loop — heist + contribute round-trip; never steal without giving back
- Layer 8 produces dissertation-grade research output — academic capital is substrate, not garnish
- Reflexive Operator produces
domain-meta-study.md alongside the 8 stratum artifacts — every build co-arises with a study-of-build
- Capital flow is N-channel, not 1-channel — monetary is one of many; meta-skill capital, audience cross-flow, tool extraction, work-improvement all count
The 8 Strata
Every domain composes from these. See references/8-strata-spec.md for full per-stratum spec.
| # | Layer | Question | Output artifact |
|---|
| 1 | Ontology | What is the domain made of? | domain-ontology.md |
| 2 | Lineage | How did it become what it is? | domain-lineage.md (3 timeslices × 2 registers) |
| 3 | Constellation | Who is doing it well, where do we exist relative? | domain-constellation.yaml (75-person file) |
| 4 | Gap-map | Where is unexploited terrain? | domain-gap-map.md (gaps + heist targets) |
| 5 | Agent fleet | Who serves the work when you arrive? | domain-agent-fleet.yaml |
| 6 | Production stack | What does shipping require? | domain-production-stack.md |
| 7 | Internal magnet | What flows IN when the flag pierces? | domain-attractor.md |
| 8 | External contribution | What flows OUT to the community? | domain-contribution-charter.md |
Voodoo loads layer 8 heavily (ethical floor, anti-extraction guard). Chess and fitness share a similar load profile. Both shapes validate the schema — generative across radically dissimilar domains rather than overfit to one.
The 4 Operators
See references/4-operators-spec.md for full spec. All four fire simultaneously on every flag-pierce.
1. Selfish-altruistic loop (single-engagement)
Learn-for-self → Quality-of-product → Service-to-friends →
Friends-elevated → Network-effect → Self-elevated → More-learning
The selfishness is a feature. It locks the user into being a real practitioner rather than a curator. Without the lock, the system curates dead.
2. Magnetic membrane (single-domain, two-way)
Flag pierces →
INTERNAL: magnetize all applicable, transmute through user's lens, alchemize toward ideal
EXTERNAL: contribute to community
Pull-in = refinery. Push-out = gift. Per Tenet Protocol — both directions simultaneously, never one without the other.
3. Portfolio Operator (cross-portfolio, two-way) — v2 + v2.1
Push (v2): every flag-pierce produces three cross-flows simultaneously:
- meta-skill extraction (writing / voice / community-building)
- domain-pair overlaps (each new domain creates N-1 publishable conversation surfaces)
- tool/audience cross-flow (engines amortize across portfolio nodes)
Pull (v2.1): every flag-pierce begins with portfolio-audit — scan ~/Workspace/ for engines / skills / primitives that match candidate-domain shape; only enter layers 1-8 after portfolio-reuse-map.md is filled.
4. Reflexive Operator (build + study, parallel) — v2.2
Every domain instantiation produces domain-meta-study.md alongside the 8 stratum artifacts. Where the other three operators govern flow, this one governs recursion — the thing and the thing-studied co-arise. Per Tenet Protocol, every build-action triggers its opposing reflection-action simultaneously.
The Use Protocol
Sequential within a single instantiation; recursive across portfolio lifecycle.
Phase 0 — Portfolio audit (PULL)
Run scripts/audit-portfolio.sh. Globs ~/Workspace/ for existing engines and classifies them into the 3-tier engine taxonomy (see references/engine-taxonomy.md):
- Domain engines — re-skinnable within similar domain (BODI 4-level funnel, spiral renderer, landing-engine)
- Meta-engines — cross-domain pattern (cross-pollination diagnosis, 75-person Constellation, PDE skill, Bridge Content templates, Discord rituals)
- Consultant engines — every engagement regardless of domain (knowledge base, application pipeline, plan-mode discipline, IRF/MEMORY/chezmoi protocols, conversation-corpus pipeline)
Output: portfolio-reuse-map.md showing which engines re-skin, which need invention, which are skin-only domain-specific work.
Phase 0.5 — Engine overlap board (THE STRETCHING RACK)
Run scripts/portfolio-gap-audit.sh. Operates across N concurrent DIWS instances simultaneously to surface holes and fat at portfolio scale.
For each axis (the 8 strata + 4 operators), the script reports:
- Holes — under-developed in 1+ instances; transplantable from a sibling instance
- Fat — over-engineered in 1+ instances; consolidatable into a shared engine
- N-way overlap — concept present in ≥2 instances; promotion candidate to meta-engine
Output: holes-fat-report.md. Refines portfolio reuse from listing engines to seeing them in spatial relation, identifying white-space across the whole portfolio.
Phase 1-8 — Stratum instantiation
Walk each stratum in order, filling its template from assets/ into the domain's instantiation directory. Use references/8-strata-spec.md for canonical questions.
Order is canonical but not strictly serial — strata 1-3 can be parallelized; 4 depends on 3; 5-8 are largely independent once 1-4 are in place.
Phase 9 — Operators fire (REFLEXIVE)
After stratum artifacts ship:
- Selfish-altruistic loop: confirm the user is in practitioner-mode, not curator-mode (gate)
- Magnetic membrane: confirm both INTERNAL and EXTERNAL outputs exist (no one-way pierces)
- Portfolio Operator: write
portfolio-resonance.md — 3 cross-flows fired
- Reflexive Operator: write
domain-meta-study.md alongside the 8 strata
Phase 10 — Cross-pollination diagnosis (synthesis)
Run scripts/portfolio-gap-audit.sh with this new instance + sibling instances. Surfaces N-1 cross-pollination opportunities by default. Each becomes a candidate essay, video, or joint-product opportunity.
Engine + Skin Pattern
Engine = portfolio-pull primitive (re-skinnable)
Skin = domain-specific 8-stratum instantiation
New code = only what neither engine nor skin can express
Target ratio: next 5 friend-engagements consume 60–80% engine + 20–40% skin, not 100% from-scratch. Phase 0 enforces this.
Layer 4 ↔ Layer 8 Heist + Contribute Loop
Layer 4 names heist targets — homages worth remixing. Layer 8 closes the loop by pushing improvements back upstream to the same competitors. Heist becomes relationship; relationship becomes co-development. Never steal without giving back.
Intelligence-gathering is ongoing protocol, not one-shot. Continuous monitoring of gap-map targets means the contribution charter has continuous output.
Composition with PDE
DIWS sits beneath PDE. PDE invocations consume a filled DIWS instance:
DIWS Phase 0 → audit portfolio
DIWS Phase 0.5 → stretching-rack diagnosis
DIWS Phase 1-8 → fill 8 strata for domain
DIWS Phase 9 → fire 4 operators
─────────────────────────────────────────
PDE Phase 1 → IDENTIFY (consumes DIWS Stratum 5 agent-fleet)
PDE Phase 2 → MAP (consumes DIWS Strata 1-4)
PDE Phase 3 → ENCODE (types, schemas, tests)
PDE Phase 4 → EXPRESS (4 rhetorical modes)
PDE Phase 5 → DEPLOY
─────────────────────────────────────────
DIWS Phase 10 → cross-pollination diagnosis (post-PDE)
PDE Phase 1 (IDENTIFY) was previously rebuilding the agent census from scratch every time. With DIWS, Stratum 5 (domain-agent-fleet.yaml) is the canonical source — PDE consumes it.
Composition with MSP (Modular Synthesis Philosophy)
See references/diws-msp-mapping.md for the full isomorphism. Briefly:
| MSP primitive | DIWS construct |
|---|
| Oscillator | DIWS instance (one per domain) |
| Filter | Mode blender (DIWS substrate → PDE composition matrix) |
| Modulator | The 4 operators (selfish / magnetic / portfolio / reflexive) |
| Mixer | Phase 0.5 stretching rack (combines N DIWS instances) |
| VCA | Capital-flow channel selection |
| Feedback | Phase 10 cross-pollination diagnosis (autopoietic) |
MSP names how the patches compose. DIWS names what the modules contain.
Modes
Distinct invocation modes the skill supports:
mode portfolio-pull — Phase 0 driver; produces portfolio-reuse-map.mdmode portfolio-resonance — Phase 0.5 driver; runs stretching rack across N instancesmode reflexive-study — produces domain-meta-study.md alongside any stratum artifactmode engine-extract — when an instance reveals a generalizable pattern, flag for promotion to meta-engine or consultant-engine (user-authorized)mode full-instantiation — all phases 0 → 10 for a single domainmode cross-pollination-diagnosis — focused Phase 10 run between 2+ existing instances
Proof Instances
Stress-tested fills under proof-instances/:
chess/ — Hokage Chess (Rob Bonavoglia client) as study sourcewellness/ — BODI fitness / Maddie Elevate Align as study sourceeducation/ — Jessica stub (DIWS schema v2.2 reference)voodoo/ — outlier validator (loads layer 8 heavily; design-only)
The chess and wellness instances are READ-ONLY studies of existing client work — they extract the substrate already running underneath those repos without modifying source repos. The education stub demonstrates how a pre-active flag is loaded. The voodoo outlier proves the schema generates across radically dissimilar domains.
Out-of-Scope
- DIWS does NOT build products — that's PDE's job
- DIWS does NOT execute outreach to constellation members — that's the user's call
- DIWS does NOT modify source-repo state when building proof instances — substrate fills live in this skill's directory only
- DIWS does NOT auto-promote engines to higher tiers — the user authorizes promotion via
mode engine-extract
Verification (after running on a new flag-pierce)
Rules of Engagement
- Dissertation-grade default: Layer 8 output is substrate, not garnish
- Heist + Contribute: stealing an idea requires an equal or greater upstream gift
- Engine Taxonomy: categorize reusables as Domain, Meta, or Consultant tier
- All 4 operators or none: Tenet Protocol — partial firing is system failure
- Read-only on source repos: when building proof instances from existing client work, never write into source repos
Cross-references
