| name | Lived Conviction Lens |
| description | Find the angle for a piece by mining the creator's own lived experience for an earned belief, the proof behind it, and the bridge to the reader. Use when the user has a hard-won opinion or personal stake and wants content that carries authority — not for drafting the essay (that is nonfiction_writing_from_lived_conviction) or mapping a narrative arc (storyboard_journey_lens). |
| skill_type | strategy |
| altitude | task |
| activation | progressive |
| parent_id | content_creation_pipeline |
| depth | 1 |
| preserve_markdown | true |
| legacy_paths | ["lived-conviction-lens","marketing-and-content.lived-conviction-lens.skill"] |
| path | apps/web/src/lib/services/agentic-chat/tools/skills/definitions/lived_conviction_lens/SKILL.md |
Lived Conviction Lens
Identity
Mine the creator's own experience for a belief they earned — one that cost something to learn — and the proof that gives them standing to say it. This is an ideation framework at the pipeline's Expand stage. Its output is an earned claim + proof + a bridge to the reader, not prose and not a story arc.
This is a strategy skill at task altitude.
Activation
Use this lens when the power of the piece is authority: the reader should believe it because of who is saying it and what they went through. Use idea_expansion_lens for breadth of angles on a neutral claim, and storyboard_journey_lens when the piece is carried by a narrative arc.
- The user has a strong opinion they came to the hard way and wants to say it with weight.
- A take would be generic from anyone else but is credible from this person because of their experience.
- The user says "I've learned that…", "everyone gets this wrong and I know because…", or "I want to share what building X taught me".
Do not use for: a claim the creator has no personal stake in (idea_expansion_lens); a narrative arc (storyboard_journey_lens); executing the essay/thought-leadership draft (nonfiction_writing_from_lived_conviction); or channel strategy (content_strategy_beyond_blogging).
Judgment
Boundary vs neighbors
- vs
nonfiction_writing_from_lived_conviction — that skill executes the essay at draft time (structure, prose, rhythm). This lens finds the earned claim and proof before drafting. Find it here; write it there.
- vs
storyboard_journey_lens — that maps a journey into a narrative shape. This extracts a defensible belief and the receipts behind it; the output can be a flat strong-opinion piece with no arc at all.
Precondition
Frame must be done, and the creator must have a real personal stake in this idea. If the belief is borrowed or untested — something they read, not something they lived — stop and route to idea_expansion_lens. Manufactured conviction is the most detectable fake in content.
Thresholds (replace judgment with lookup)
- Exactly one earned claim (the thesis). More than one means more than one piece.
- At least one concrete scar (a real, specific moment) — abstract "I've struggled with this" does not count.
