/Wonder-Pill

name: wonder-pill
description: Turns open-ended requests into things to think WITH instead of answers to accept. Audits the hidden assumptions inside a topic, inverts them into sharp "what if" provocations, branches each one outward, and delivers a fully-expanded mind map image plus the written wonderings. Fire this when the person signals they want to open up a space and think alongside you — "wonder about X", "what are the weird angles on X", "help me think about what this could be", "I want to explore, not decide yet" — or when they invoke /wonder or /wonderpill. Do NOT fire when the same topic is attached to a request for concrete, usable, or decided output: a named deliverable, a count ("give me 5 names"), a deadline ("ideas I can ship this week"), or a "which / what should I pick" question — those want straight answers, not a wonder pill. When it is genuinely unclear which they want, this skill opens by asking one line rather than branching. Not for factual lookups or executing a plan already chosen.

Wonder Pill

What this skill is for

Ordinary brainstorming gets treated like a search query: find the nearest well-trodden answers, rank them, hand them over. That produces a list the person picks from, which quietly makes them the *chooser* instead of the *thinker*, and anchors them to whatever you happened to say first.

This skill produces something different: **provocations to think with.** Questioned assumptions, sharp what-ifs, and branches that keep going — handed back as a map of the thought-space rather than a recommendation. The person stays the thinker. Nothing converges unless they ask it to.

The one failure mode that matters

The thing that kills this skill is **"generic wild"** — what-ifs that *sound* expansive but have no hook to pull on. "What if plants were different?" is worse than useless: it hands the work back without giving anything to push against. "What if plants could hear?" is alive, because you can immediately feel what would have to change.

Everything below exists to force specificity. The central mechanism:

> **Never invent a what-if freely. Always derive it by inverting a named assumption.**

That traceability is the whole trick. If you can't say which assumption a what-if is pushing against, it isn't ready.

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Before you run: is this actually a wonder-pill ask?

This skill is easy to trigger by accident on someone who just wants ideas they can use. Check first:

• **If the request clearly wants concrete or decided output** — a named deliverable, a count, a deadline, "which should I pick" — don't run. Answer normally, and mention the skill is there if they'd rather open the space than close it.
• **If it's genuinely ambiguous**, ask exactly one line before any intake, using `ask_user_input_v0` (tappable): *"Want a wonder pill — questioned assumptions and what-ifs to think with — or a straight list of ideas you can act on?"* Only start branching if they pick the wonder pill.
• **An explicit `/wonder`, `/wonderpill`, or "wonder about X" skips this check.** They asked for it by name; go straight to Stage 0.

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Stage 0 — Intake

Ask **three questions, no more**, before any thinking. These aren't generic clarification — the quality of a what-if is almost entirely determined by how far it's allowed to drift from the person's reality, and that's unguessable. "What if plants could hear" is great for a curious kid and useless for someone submitting a materials list in three days.

Use `ask_user_input_v0` (tappable options are much easier than typing):

1. **Leash length** — "Pure wondering, or does something eventually have to get built/submitted/decided?" → options like *Pure wondering* / *Should be buildable eventually* / *Has a real deadline* 2. **Hard walls** — "Anything I shouldn't bother questioning?" → options like *Budget* / *Timeline* / *Materials on hand* / *Nothing, go wild* 3. **Opening move** — "Want me to hunt for a genuinely weird real fact to start from, or work from your framing as-is?" → *Go find something weird* / *Start from my framing*

**Skip intake entirely** if the request already answers all three. A person who writes "I have two weeks, $30, and it has to fit on a poster board" has told you everything; asking again is annoying and wastes their patience.

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Stage 1 — Oddity hunt (once per session only)

If Stage 0 gave permission, take **one cheap pass** to find a genuinely odd, specific fact or unresolved tension in the topic. Search if that helps. This becomes the session's opening spark and sets the tone — it's the most alive entry point because it's rooted in something real rather than an abstract inversion.

Two rules:

• **Once per session, never per branch.** Per-branch oddity hunting becomes padding, slows everything down, and starts to feel like showing off.
• **Fail fast.** If nothing genuinely odd surfaces quickly, drop it without ceremony and move on. A forced "huh, interesting" is worse than not doing this at all.

A real oddity is specific and slightly uncomfortable — a thing that shouldn't work but does, a measurement nobody can explain, two accepted facts that don't quite fit together. Not a trivia factoid.

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Stage 2 — Assumption audit (the backbone)

Surface **3–5 load-bearing assumptions** buried in the request. Load-bearing means: if it stopped being true, the shape of the whole thing would change.

For "science fair project," the buried assumptions might be:

• it needs a physical demo
• it needs results measurable in one sitting
• one person builds it
• it uses materials you can buy
• the judges have to understand it in three minutes

Rules that keep this honest:

• **State each assumption plainly as a premise, not as a question.** The premise is a separate artifact from the what-if, and writing it out is what prevents drift into vagueness.
• **Drop anything the person named as a hard wall.** Those aren't up for inversion — inverting them produces useless output dressed as bol