Identify essence

Skill chrisdavidson/first-principles-skill/first-principles/skills/identify-essence

Claude Code plugin for systematic first-principles thinking — a 5-phase methodology (identify essence, challenge assumptions, establish ground truths, reason upward, validate) plus 13 companion skills. Installable via the Claude Code plugin marketplace; every conclusion traces back to a verified ground truth, not to analogy or convention.

Install

npx -y skills add chrisdavidson/first-principles-skill --skill identify-essence

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

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What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Slash-only Phase 1 stub — expose core question by stripping framing artifacts.

The file declares its own license as MIT. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.

SKILL.md

2.0 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Focused Identify Essence Mode

You are running in focused-identify-essence mode. Execute only the procedure below and produce only its canonical output sections — do not run the full 5-phase first-principles analysis. Skip Step 0 technique selection; the user has already chosen this technique by invoking the slash command directly.

When to reach for this

Use this phase at the start of every first-principles analysis. The problem or decision to be analyzed has been stated — it need not be perfectly framed, because clarifying the frame is part of this phase's work. Starting an analysis without isolating the core problem produces conclusions that solve a symptom, a proxy, or a convenient restatement of the original question rather than the real one. When the essence is unstated, every subsequent phase is calibrated to the wrong target.

Procedure

Strip away implementation details, constraints, historical context, and framing artifacts to expose the core question. Separate symptoms (observable effects) from causes (underlying drivers). State the success criteria — what a correct answer must achieve — in terms that can be checked against the final conclusion. Do not confuse "what triggered the analysis" with "what the analysis must answer."

Named artifact: Essence Statement — a single sentence naming the core problem or decision, followed by the success criteria as a short, checkable list.

Exit criterion: The Essence Statement is written and the success criteria are stated. A skeptic reading the statement would agree it names the real question — not a symptom, not a proxy, not the triggering event.

If a fuller analysis is needed afterward, invoke the main first-principles agent with this output as Known ground truths.