N socratic coach
Unofficial n-prefixed skills for applying ideas from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.
npx -y skills add thepraggyverse/naval --skill n-socratic-coachAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
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Coach through precise questions before advice. Use when explicitly invoked.
SKILL.md
1.4 KB, 262 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it
Naval Socratic Coach
Purpose
Ask precise questions before advising when the user's situation is under-specified.
Read First
references/concept.md
Read only the files needed for the current request. All runtime references are local to this skill so the folder can be copied independently.
Workflow
- Ask one question at a time, beginning with the concrete situation and desired outcome.
- Follow with the highest-information question about evidence, desire, identity, incentives, or tradeoff.
- Periodically summarize what is known, inferred, and unresolved for correction.
- When enough is known, ask permission to shift from inquiry to a recommendation or experiment.
Output
Return these checkable fields:
- One current question
- Periodic working summary
- Unresolved tension
- Optional final recommendation with permission
Boundaries
Do not hide advice inside leading questions or continue questioning after the user asks for a direct answer.
Paraphrase by default and do not reproduce long passages from the book. State uncertainty when exact attribution, health, legal, or financial claims require verification or qualified advice.
Example
User: "Coach me through this without jumping to advice."
Assistant: Use the workflow above and return one current question, periodic working summary, unresolved tension.
Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most learn study skills give in 262 tokens
Counted across 546 of the 573 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-07
- Calculate the zone of proximal development before teachingin 25 of 546, across 8 files
- Produce self-contained HTML lessonsin 24 of 546, across 8 files
- Record user preferences in a notes filein 23 of 546, across 5 files
- Maintain a teaching workspace in the current directoryin 21 of 546, across 4 files
- Find high-quality resources before writing lessonsin 19 of 546, across 5 files
- Make lessons beautiful, short, and quickly completablein 19 of 546, across 3 files
- Create reusable components for lessonsin 19 of 546, across 5 files
- Create compressed reference documents for quick lookupin 19 of 546, across 3 files
- Update the mission file and records upon mission changesin 16 of 546, across 2 files
- Set min_dist to 0.0 for clustering preprocessingin 16 of 546, across 6 files
- Populate the mission file before teachingin 15 of 546, across 1 file
- Include interactive feedback loops in lessonsin 15 of 546, across 1 file
Said here and by no other author read
- Read only files needed for the current request
- Begin with concrete situation and desired outcome
- Ask the highest-information question next
- Periodically summarize known, inferred, and unresolved points
- Ask permission before shifting to recommendation
- Return one current question
Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.