| 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
- Ask what topic/claim/change to walk, and how hard (gentle / normal / brutal —
how many "why"s deep to push).
- Open with a definition-level question.
- Loop: read the answer → pick the weakest point → ask the next, harder question.
- 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.
