academic-letter-architect
Guides the creation of evidence-based academic recommendation letters, reference letters, and award nominations that combine concrete examples, meaningful comparisons, and genuine enthusiasm. Use when writing recommendation letters for students, postdocs, or colleagues, or when user mentions recommendation letter, reference, nomination, letter of support, endorsement, or needs help with strong advocacy and comparative statements.
adr-architecture
Documents significant architectural and technical decisions with full context, alternatives considered, trade-offs analyzed, and consequences understood. Creates a decision trail that helps teams understand why decisions were made. Use when choosing between technology options, making infrastructure decisions, establishing standards, migrating systems, or when user mentions ADR, architecture decision, technical decision record, or decision documentation.
adverse-selection-prior
Produces a Bayesian prior probability that an offered transaction is +EV for the recipient, given that the counterparty chose to propose it. Applies Akerlof market-for-lemons logic -- if they offered it, they believe it is +EV for them, so the prior that it is +EV for us is materially below 50%. Reusable across trade evaluation, waiver drops (another team dropping a player is also adverse selection), job-offer analysis, M&A, and any "someone offered me this" situation. Use when you receive an unsolicited trade/offer/proposal, analyzing incoming trade prior, evaluating why a counterparty proposed a deal, or when user mentions adverse selection, market for lemons, why did they offer this, incoming trade prior, they proposed it, Bayesian adjustment on received offer.
advisory-edit
A strict advisory-only editing discipline for a writer who dictates ("speaks out") essays and wants help WITHOUT having their voice changed. The editor directs structure, flags grammar, and suggests strategic language — but never modifies the writer's text unless the writer explicitly says "apply" / "make that change" / "rewrite this." Produces a line-referenced, suggestion-only critique where every item is marked the writer's call. Four passes — structural, line (grammar/clarity), voice, pre-publish. Use when reviewing a draft, critiquing a spoken-out article, or doing a pre-publish check. The companion to learning-in-public-voice and the operating manual for the biostat-editor agent.
alignment-values-north-star
Creates actionable alignment frameworks that give teams a shared North Star (direction), values (guardrails), and decision tenets (behavioral standards). Enables autonomous decision-making while maintaining organizational coherence. Use when starting new teams, scaling organizations, defining culture, establishing product vision, resolving misalignment, creating strategic clarity, or when user mentions North Star, team values, mission, principles, guardrails, decision framework, or cultural alignment.
analogy-weight-check
For every analogy in a substacker draft, verifies it carries mechanical weight — the analogy does real work explaining the mechanism, not merely decorates it. Cross-references analogy-catalog.md for novelty (is this analogy reused from a prior post?) and domain fit (biology > organizational > sports preferred; physics/military disfavored). Use whenever an analogy appears in the draft. Trigger keywords — analogy weight, decorative, mechanical weight, reused analogy, catalog check, metaphor check.
anomaly-fraud-scanner
Scans transactions for fraud and anomaly signals — duplicate charges within 48 hours, transactions more than 3 standard deviations above a merchant's historical average, first-ever transaction with a new merchant above a high-dollar threshold, and unusual geography or time. Produces severity-tagged alerts with the transaction id, evidence, and a recommended action (call bank, freeze card, dispute, monitor). Use for vigilance scans on every drop, after any large unexplained outflow, or when user mentions fraud check, suspicious charge, anomaly detection, or duplicate charge.
answer-uncomfortable-question
Takes one strategic question about substacker ("should we launch paid?", "is this section dead?", "are we writing for the wrong audience?") and produces the mandatory evidence + reasoning + downside triad plus a recommendation. Used 3 times per Growth Strategist review. Trigger keywords — uncomfortable question, strategic question, evidence reasoning downside, triad.
attribute-performance
For each substacker post that materially over- or under-performs the rolling baseline (|z| ≥ 1.0), produces a plain-English attribution paragraph with calibrated confidence (high / medium / low / unexplained). Considers subject-line effect, topic zeitgeist, external share, day-of-week, length effect, and audience-notes signals. Labels unexplained outliers explicitly rather than fabricating a story. Use after compute-baseline when outlier posts exist. Trigger keywords — attribution, why did this post work, outlier explanation, performance analysis.
auction-first-price-shading
Computes the optimal shaded bid for a first-price sealed-bid auction given a true private value, an estimate of the number of competing bidders N, and a value-distribution assumption. Implements the `(N-1)/N` equilibrium shading rule for uniform private values, adjusts for log-normal or empirical value distributions, layers a risk-aversion adjustment, and caps output against the bidder's remaining budget. Domain-neutral auction theory reusable across fantasy sports (baseball FAAB, NBA/NHL waiver auctions), prediction-market limit sizing, sealed procurement bids, and any blind-bid context. Use when user mentions "first-price auction bid", "sealed bid shading", "(N-1)/N", "FAAB bid amount", "auction shading", "optimal bid first-price", "bid for sealed-bid", "blind bid sizing", or when downstream logic needs a principled shade factor rather than an ad-hoc heuristic.
auction-winners-curse-haircut
Applies a Bayesian haircut to a bid valuation for common-value auctions where winning is itself evidence the bidder over-estimated. Takes a raw valuation, a value-type classification (common_value / private_value / mixed), the number of informed bidders N, and a signal-dispersion estimate, and returns an adjusted valuation. Domain-neutral and reusable across fantasy FAAB, prediction markets, M&A bids, ad-auction budgets, and any generic bidding context. Use when user mentions "winner's curse", "common value auction", "valuation haircut", "adverse valuation", "Bayesian bid adjustment", or "over-paying in auction".
audit-drift
Checks every post currently assigned to a substacker section against that section's promise and flags posts that no longer fit. Distinguishes acceptable-stretch (minor) from borderline (surface for review) from genuine-drift (violates promise). Never reassigns automatically — only flags. Use on every Curator run where at least one section already exists. Trigger keywords — drift, drift audit, section fit, promise violation, post in wrong section.
bayesian-reasoning-calibration
Applies Bayesian reasoning to systematically update probability estimates with new evidence, helping make better forecasts and avoid overconfidence. Use when making predictions or judgments under uncertainty, forecasting outcomes, evaluating probabilities, testing hypotheses, calibrating confidence, assessing risks with uncertain data, or when user mentions priors, likelihoods, Bayes theorem, probability updates, forecasting, calibration, or belief revision.
brainstorm-diverge-converge
Applies structured divergent-convergent thinking to generate many creative options, organize them into meaningful clusters, then systematically evaluate and narrow to the strongest choices. Balances creative exploration with disciplined decision-making. Use when exploring product ideas, solving open-ended problems, generating strategic alternatives, developing research questions, designing experiments, or when user mentions brainstorming, ideation, divergent thinking, generating options, or evaluating alternatives.
business-narrative-builder
Constructs a structured narrative linking a company's qualitative business story to quantitative valuation drivers (revenue growth, target margin, reinvestment efficiency, cost of capital, failure risk). Classifies the company within a 6-stage corporate life cycle and sizes the total addressable market. Use when starting a company analysis, building a valuation narrative, assessing competitive position, sizing TAM, or when user mentions business narrative, story to numbers, life cycle stage, or company analysis.
career-document-architect
Guides the creation of career documents for academic advancement including research statements, teaching statements, diversity statements, CVs, and biosketches. Combines strategic positioning, narrative coherence, and institutional alignment with authentic representation of contributions and vision. Use when writing or reviewing faculty applications, fellowship statements, promotion packages, award applications, or when user mentions research statement, teaching philosophy, diversity statement, biosketch, academic CV, or career narrative.
cash-flow-forecaster
Projects 30-90 days of daily cash flow per cash account by combining current balance, scheduled recurring inflows and outflows from recurring.json, and a 6-month rolling average of discretionary spend, then flags days where projected balance falls below a configurable safety floor. Use for forward planning, detecting upcoming overdrafts, sizing pre-funding for sinking funds, or when user mentions cash flow projection, runway, balance forecast, or upcoming bills coverage.
category-allocation-best-response
Computes the best-response allocation of roster resources across categories in a Head-to-Head Categories matchup. Given our per-category capacity, the opponent's projected output, per-category win probabilities (from matchup-win-probability-sim), and a K-of-N winning threshold, classifies categories into pushed / contested / conceded buckets, emits per-category leverage weights for downstream lineup and streaming decisions, computes the resulting K-of-N win probability, and writes a plain-English rationale. Domain-neutral — portable to any fantasy sport with H2H Cats scoring (MLB 10-cat, NBA 9-cat, NHL 10-cat). Use when you need push/punt decisions, dominated-strategy elimination, leverage weights per cat, or best-response allocation; or when the user mentions "category allocation", "push or punt", "K of N cats", "dominated strategy elimination", "best response allocation", "Blotto fantasy", "leverage weights per cat", or "which cats to push".
category-trend-analyzer
For each spending category, computes current-period spend, 6-month rolling average, year-over-year delta, and budget variance, then flags categories that are outliers (>1.5x rolling average or >130% of budget). Produces a ranked list of categories that grew, shrank, or stayed flat, plus the top transactions driving each outlier. Use for monthly spending reviews, identifying lifestyle creep, evaluating budget adherence, or when user mentions category trends, spending changes, budget variance, or outlier spend.
causal-inference-root-cause
Systematically investigates causal relationships to identify true root causes rather than correlations or symptoms. Distinguishes genuine causation from spurious associations, tests competing explanations, and designs interventions addressing underlying drivers. Use when investigating why something happened, debugging systems, analyzing failures, evaluating policy impacts, or when user mentions root cause, causal chain, confounding, spurious correlation, or asks "why did this really happen?"
chain-estimation-decision-storytelling
Chains estimation, decision analysis, and storytelling to transform uncertain choices into clear, stakeholder-ready recommendations. Quantifies uncertain variables, applies expected value analysis to identify the best option, then packages the analysis into a persuasive narrative. Use when evaluating strategic options (build vs buy, market entry, resource allocation), quantifying tradeoffs, justifying investments, pitching to decision-makers, or when user mentions ROI analysis, expected value, business case, cost-benefit, or needs to combine estimation with persuasive communication.
chain-roleplay-debate-synthesis
Facilitates structured roleplay, debate, and synthesis to resolve decisions with multiple legitimate perspectives and inherent tensions. Surfaces assumptions that single-viewpoint analysis would miss and integrates competing priorities into coherent recommendations. Use when stakeholders have competing priorities (growth vs. sustainability, speed vs. quality), need to pressure-test ideas from different angles, explore tradeoffs between incompatible values, or synthesize conflicting expert opinions into coherent strategy.
chain-spec-risk-metrics
Chains together clear specifications, proactive risk analysis (premortem/register), and measurable success metrics into a comprehensive planning artifact for high-stakes initiatives. Use when planning migrations, launches, or strategic changes that need implementation roadmaps, risk mitigation, and instrumentation. Invoke when user mentions "plan this migration", "launch strategy", "implementation roadmap", "what could go wrong", "how do we measure success", or when high-impact decisions need comprehensive planning.
check-analogy-novelty
Cross-references each proposed analogy in a 5-framing set against substacker shared-context/analogy-catalog.md to flag reuse. Classifies each analogy as new, reused-from-catalog (and which entry), or adjacent-to-catalog (close to an existing entry but not identical). Prevents the writer from recycling "imagine a library" for the twentieth time. Use after generate-analogy-set and before presenting framings to the writer. Trigger keywords — novelty, catalog, analogy reuse, already used, imagine a library.
check-corpus-readiness
Checks whether the substacker corpus has enough material to justify a Curator run. Counts published posts, time-gates against the last review, and reports go/no-go with the specific gate that failed. Use before any Curator run, and on cold start to decide whether to propose sections yet. Trigger keywords — readiness, corpus ready, gate check, cadence gate, pre-flight.
chef-assistant
Guides cooking through culinary principles, food science, and flavor architecture rather than rote recipe steps. Covers technique teaching (knife skills, sauces, searing, braising), food science (Maillard reaction, emulsions, brining), flavor troubleshooting (salt/acid/fat/heat balance), menu planning, ingredient substitutions, plating, and cultural cuisine exploration. Use when users mention cooking, recipes, chef, cuisine, flavor, technique, plating, food science, seasoning, or culinary questions.
citation-form-check
Verifies every paper or named research result cited in a substacker draft uses the inline "Author(s), Institution, Year" form per style-guide, not a bare hyperlink or title-alone reference. Flags bare-hyperlink citations and missing-institution attributions. Use whenever the draft references external research. Trigger keywords — citation, paper citation, bare hyperlink, authors, institution, reference format.
claim-extractor
Extracts atomic technical claims from a substacker essay draft, converting flowing intuition-first prose into a numbered list where each item is a statement that could in principle be verified or falsified. Skips non-technical sections (personal anecdote, motivation, call-to-action). Use when the Technical Reviewer starts a per-draft review. Trigger keywords — extract claims, atomic claims, technical claim list, fact-check prep.
classify-claim
Assigns each extracted claim to one of five buckets — simplified-correct, simplified-boundary, wrong, contested, overclaim — with low/medium/high confidence and one-sentence rationale. Classification happens before primary-source verification (which confirms, not invents). Use for every claim from claim-extractor. Trigger keywords — classify, bucket, simplified vs wrong, claim type, technical classification.
classify-post-to-section
Assigns a substacker draft or published post to the best-fitting section (or to unassigned) based on content + section promises in section-map.md. Used by the Editor on every draft review (to load the right voice overlay) and by the Curator in batch mode. Trigger keywords — classify post, section assignment, which section, route post, per-draft section.
closer-critique
Evaluates the final paragraph of a substacker draft for compression and closing form — bolded maxim, forward-looking question, or compressed mechanism statement. For series posts (frontmatter series — {slug}), verifies the running scoreboard (P&L, Brier, W-L) is present and updated. Use on every draft. Blocks publication of series posts missing the scoreboard. Trigger keywords — closer, closing, last paragraph, bolded maxim, scoreboard, CTA, wrap up, conclusion.
cluster-corpus-by-theme
Performs axial-coding-style thematic clustering over the substacker corpus of published posts to surface candidate sections. Uses Braun & Clarke's six-phase thematic analysis — familiarization, initial coding, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining themes, naming. Reads full bodies, not titles. Use when re-opening the section question. Trigger keywords — cluster, theme, axial coding, thematic analysis, candidate sections.
code-data-analysis-scaffolds
Generates structured scaffolds (frameworks, checklists, templates) for technical work — TDD test suites, exploratory data analysis plans, statistical analysis designs, causal vs predictive modeling objectives, and validation checklists. Use when starting technical work that needs systematic planning before execution. Invoke when user mentions "write tests for", "explore this dataset", "analyze", "model", "validate", "design an A/B test", or when technical work needs scaffolding before execution.
cognitive-design
Grounds visual design decisions in cognitive psychology principles — perception, attention, memory, Gestalt grouping, and visual encoding hierarchy — explaining WHY certain designs work. Covers interfaces, data visualizations, educational content, and presentations. Invoke when user mentions cognitive load, visual hierarchy, working memory, preattentive processing, Gestalt principles, encoding hierarchy, or cognitive design pyramid. For design evaluation, use `design-evaluation-audit`. For fallacy prevention, use `cognitive-fallacies-guard`. For data storytelling, use `visual-storytelling-design`.
cognitive-fallacies-guard
Detects and prevents visual misleads, cognitive biases, and data integrity violations in visualizations, dashboards, reports, and presentations. Audits charts for honesty, diagnoses misinterpretation causes, and provides specific fixes. Invoke when user mentions chartjunk, misleading chart, truncated axis, data integrity, visual deception, 3D chart problems, cherry-picking data, or needs to audit visualizations for accuracy. For general design evaluation, use `design-evaluation-audit`. For cognitive foundations, use `cognitive-design`.
communication-storytelling
Transforms analysis, data, and complex information into clear, persuasive narratives tailored to specific audiences — executives, customers, investors, or non-technical stakeholders. Provides story structures (Hero's Journey, Problem-Solution-Benefit, Situation-Complication-Resolution) and audience adaptation techniques. Use when presenting findings, explaining technical concepts to non-technical audiences, writing announcements, or when user mentions "write this for", "explain to", "present findings", "make this compelling", or "audience is".
company-classification-routing
Classifies a company and routes it to the correct analytical treatment — life cycle stage, sector type, earnings status, ownership, distress markers, geography — then compiles the hard constraints that follow into classification.json. Use before any valuation begins, when deciding which valuation model applies, or when a company looks non-standard — a bank or insurer, a pre-revenue or loss-making firm, a distressed or declining business, a private company or an IPO, a cyclical or commodity producer, an emerging-market firm, or a multi-business group.
component-extraction
Domain-neutral methodology for the third level of Adler-style reading - extracting structured components (terms, propositions, arguments, solutions) from a document section by section. Selects a reading strategy appropriate to document size and structure (section-based for documents under 50 pages with clear sections; windowing for long documents without breaks; targeted for hybrid content where only specific sections matter). Writes per-section extraction notes that downstream synthesis can consume. Reusable across any extraction workflow - skill creation from a methodology document, Pass-2 content grasp on a paper's full text, evidence-mining from a long-form report. Use when an agent has done structural analysis and now needs to extract the actual atomic content. Trigger keywords - component extraction, section-by-section extraction, extract terms, extract propositions, extract arguments, Adler Level 3, interpretive reading.
compute-baseline
Computes substacker's rolling 4-week baseline for open rate, click rate, views-per-send, and weekly subscriber delta using corpus/stats/ archived CSVs. Produces per-metric z-scores of the current week against the baseline and flags cold-start windows where fewer than 4 prior weeks exist. Use after ingest-substack-csv each Monday. Trigger keywords — baseline, rolling median, z-score, cold start, per-metric comparison.
concept-rediscovery-walk
Guides a learner to invent a math or ML concept themselves through a Socratic walk — a sequence of small guessable questions that ends with the learner stating the formal definition unprompted. The 3Blue1Brown signature move. Use when the learner is meeting a foundational concept (eigenvectors, gradient, attention, softmax, KL divergence) for the first time, when prior exposure produced memorization without understanding, or when the user says "explain it from scratch", "I want to really get it", "build it up for me", or "where does this come from".
conf-abstract-enrichment
Thicken a thin or missing conference-session abstract through targeted web research so short, noisy text becomes classifiable — pulling the speaker's recent work, the linked repo or paper, and the company/product to add signal. Every enriched claim carries provenance (source URL + retrieval date) and a confidence, the enriched text is stored separately from the original (never overwriting it), and enrichment is gated so already-rich abstracts are left alone. Conference-agnostic. Use when an event record has been flagged thin by program extraction, when a session lacks enough text to classify, or when a key axis (depth, topic) is low-confidence. Trigger keywords - abstract enrichment, thicken abstract, enrich session, speaker research, thin abstract, runtime web search for talks.
conf-pipeline-orchestration
The multi-agent communication and orchestration discipline for a staged pipeline whose stages each carry calibrated uncertainty. Agents talk through files with defined schemas and status fields (never free text); the orchestrator passes input paths plus an explicit output path plus a return contract, verifies each artifact's confidence before advancing a stage gate, holds and integrates worker outputs rather than passing them through, freezes its protected control logic against a checksum, maintains a diversity floor, hardens the fragile handoffs not the resilient hubs, and names the substitution effect every optimized score produces. Conference-agnostic; preloaded by a pipeline orchestrator. Use when coordinating a staged agent pipeline, designing the orchestrator-worker contract, or deciding when to advance, reconcile, or escalate. Trigger keywords - pipeline orchestration, stage gates, structured agent communication, invariant guard, confidence propagation, conflict surfacing.
conf-preference-elicitation
Build a personalized preference profile from a small number of well-chosen, cluster-grounded questions instead of a long survey. Represents the person's interests as an uncertainty region over the theme map, picks the single highest-information-gain choice-based question (contrasting real talks from different clusters), balances exploiting known interests against exploring uncertain ones, deliberately injects outlier probes to fight selection bias, and stops as soon as the schedule would be stable. Also elicits the user-owned objective weights and hard constraints. Interactive — runs where it can actually ask the person. Conference-agnostic. Use to turn a theme map into a preference profile, to decide what to ask a conference attendee, or to elicit scheduling priorities. Trigger keywords - preference elicitation, ask few questions, information gain, choice-based questions, selection bias probe, objective weights, attendee preferences.
conf-program-extraction
Parse a heterogeneous conference program (markdown, HTML, PDF-derived text, or JSON) into normalized event records with per-field confidence scores and independent classification axes (topic, depth, format, prerequisites, recorded, capacity). Detects the program's format before extracting, treats every inferred field as uncertain (present vs inferred vs missing), and flags thin or missing abstracts so downstream enrichment can target them. Conference-agnostic. Use when ingesting a conference or event schedule into a structured store, normalizing a talk/session list, or extracting per-session metadata with calibrated confidence. Trigger keywords - program ingestion, parse schedule, session extraction, event records, conference program, talk metadata, per-field confidence.
conf-schedule-optimization
Build a personal conference schedule as a constraint-optimization problem — hard constraints (no time overlap, room-to-room travel time, capacity/registration, the attendee's own must-attends and blackouts) plus a user-owned weighted objective trading interest against breadth, pacing (maximize contiguous free time), and serendipity. Surfaces unbreakable conflicts (two high-value overlapping talks the model cannot rank) as decisions for the human rather than silently picking, and reports what each choice traded away. Conference-agnostic. Use to turn a preference profile plus a theme map into a day-by-day plan, to resolve overlapping sessions, or to balance a packed vs paced schedule. Trigger keywords - schedule optimization, conference schedule, constraint optimization, overlapping talks, contiguous free time, conflict surfacing, packed vs paced.
conf-theme-clustering
Cluster a conference's event records into a small set of coarse themes with finer sub-clusters, an explicit outlier bucket, and soft (multi-membership) affinities — using the hybrid embed-then-label pipeline (embed abstracts, reduce, density-cluster, then LLM-label the clusters) when embedding libraries are available, and an LLM-reasoned hierarchical fallback when they are not. Embeddings do the grouping; the LLM only names the groups. Conference-agnostic. Use when turning structured event records into a navigable theme map for preference elicitation and scheduling, when you need 6-8 reasonable themes rather than 20 muddy ones, or when overlapping talks must belong to more than one theme. Trigger keywords - theme clustering, cluster talks, embed then label, soft membership, outlier talks, conference themes, topic map.
constraint-based-creativity
Turns limitations into creative fuel by strategically imposing constraints that force novel thinking, break habitual patterns, and reveal unexpected solutions. Covers resource constraints (budget/time/tools), format constraints (length/medium), rule-based constraints, and perspective constraints. Use when brainstorming feels stuck or generates obvious ideas, working with limited resources, designing with specific limitations, or when user mentions "think outside the box", "we're stuck", "same old ideas", "tight constraints", or "limited budget/time".
corporate-governance-analysis
Assesses who actually controls a company and whether management is accountable — board independence, dual-class and voting structures, cross-holdings and pyramids, the marginal investor, and the gap between stated and real accountability. Use in a corporate finance analysis, when setting the objective function for a valuation, when assessing the odds that bad management gets replaced, or when valuing control.
cost-of-capital-toolkit
Estimates discount rates and the optimal financing mix — riskfree rate in any currency, equity risk premium including country risk, bottom-up and total betas, synthetic credit ratings from interest coverage, cost of debt, market value of debt, WACC, the implied equity risk premium solved from current index levels, and the cost-of-capital schedule across debt ratios that locates the optimal debt ratio, with an APV cross-check and a stress test under rating constraints. Bundles Damodaran's rating and spread tables, Altman default probabilities, industry-average betas and multiples, and country risk premiums, each tagged with its vintage. Use when estimating a discount rate, WACC, hurdle rate, cost of equity or cost of debt, unlevering or relevering a beta, when a company has no credit rating, when estimating the equity risk premium priced into the market, when looking up a sector beta or country risk premium, when converting a rate between currencies, or when finding or stressing an optimal capital structure.
cross-poster-blurb
Writes a 60-140 word third-person blurb for the Substack cross-post feature, positioned so another newsletter writer can paste it into their cross-post popup without editing. Third-person throughout ("In this piece, Kushal argues…"). No subscriber CTAs. Use as the cross-post arm of the Distribution Translator. Trigger keywords — cross-post, cross-poster, blurb, Substack cross-post, third person, positioning.
Page 1 of 6 · 271 results