first-principles SKILL.md skillA
first-principles from martineserios/thebrana is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add martineserios/thebrana/first-principles@git:20260615.6d899e8Pins git:20260615.6d899e8 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- martineserios/thebrana
- Path
system/skills/acquired/first-principles/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260615.6d899e8, committed Jun 15, 2026
- Size
- 3,796 bytes
- Repository stars
- 3
- License
- MIT
Bottom-up reasoning from fundamentals — strip assumptions, interrogate each one, rebuild from what's actually true.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# First Principles **Strip everything down to what's actually true. Rebuild from there.** Aristotle's method, popularized in engineering by Musk and in learning by Feynman. Conventional wisdom is compressed prior reasoning — first-principles forces you to re-examine whether that prior reasoning still holds. --- ## When to use - When the conventional approach feels wrong but you can't articulate why - When costs or constraints seem fixed but might be negotiable - When you need a genuinely novel solution (not iteration on existing ones) - When a complex problem seems unsolvable - After `/brana:inversion` — inversion finds what to avoid; first-principles finds a better path --- ## Step 1 — Define the problem clearly State the problem in one sentence without embedding a solution: ``` AskUserQuestion: "What problem are we trying to solve? (No 'by doing X' in the answer)" ``` Reject: "We need to make our deploy pipeline faster by switching to GitHub Actions" Accept: "We need to reduce the time between code commit and production deployment" --- ## Step 2 — List all assumptions What do you currently believe is true about this problem? Include: …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add martineserios/thebrana/first-principles@sha256:f8aa2a033949020dThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260615.6d899e8, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_fbjg523uu463b5nc)
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Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Jun 15, 2026.
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (3796 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
martineserios/thebrana · 3 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-11-01 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_fbjg523uu463b5nc GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=martineserios/thebrana/first-principles GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/f8aa2a033949020df3289543789b11b22ba0f47590b303c863306e37f7c3a8f1
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.
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