egregore: Skill for Claude Code

The Spiral — Operational Skill

Overview

The Spiral is a game-like epistemic process. It takes a core claim and spirals outward through five rings of increasing friction, grounding, and compression. Each ring has a Socratic loop. The user controls depth. The agent manages flow. Artifacts accumulate. The spiral ends when the user has rigorous, communicable output.

This is an interactive, stateful process. You are running a game, not generating a document. Every step involves the user. You ask, they answer, you push, they refine, you research, you crystallize, they decide what's next.

---

When to invoke

User says: "let's think through", "help me articulate", "pressure test this", "develop this thesis", "spiral", "deep exploration", "Socratic", or any request to go from a raw intuition to rigorous, communicable output — fundraising materials, book proposals, product strategy, research agendas, organizational philosophy, policy design, pitch decks, memos, strategy docs.

---

Setup

When the skill triggers, initialize the game:

Step 1: Gather Context

Use askUserQuestionsTool to establish the three inputs:

Question 1: "What are we spiraling on? Describe the domain — a company, a book, a product, a policy, a research question."

Question 2: "What should the spiral produce? What's the end deliverable — pitch materials, a strategy doc, a book proposal, a manifesto?"

Question 3: "Are there specific domains you know you need to cover (e.g., business model, team, market, technical architecture)? Or should the spiral discover them as we go?"

If the user provides all three in their initial message, skip to Step 2.

Step 2: Initialize State

Create spiral_state.json in the project root:

{
  "domain": "",
  "purpose": "",
  "addressable_space": [],
  "current_ring": 1,
  "current_loop": 1,
  "current_phase": "socratic",
  "artifacts": [],
  "emerged_domains": [],
  "parked_threads": [],
  "flow_state": {
    "challenge_level": "medium",
    "scaffolding_level": "medium",
    "user_energy": "high"
  },
  "descents": [],
  "ring_history": []
}