mirror of
https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent.git
synced 2026-07-12 13:52:15 +00:00
d799284b15
The optional-skills copy was still the v1.0.0 constraint-dispatch skill (SKILL.md + full-prompt-library.md only). This brings it up to the current tool: a situation-routed library of 22 named ideation methods drawn from working artists, scientists, designers, and writers. SKILL.md becomes a 4-step router (extract PHASE/DOMAIN/SPECIFICITY signals → apply overrides → route phase-then-domain → resolve ambiguity), with anti-slop operating rules and an anti-default check. Adds: - 22 method files under references/methods/ — oblique-strategies (Eno/Schmidt), oulipo, scamper, lateral-provocations (de Bono), triz (Altshuller), leverage-points (Meadows), pattern-languages (Alexander), compression-progress (Schmidhuber), analogy-and-blending, pataphysics, first-principles, polya, biomimicry, volume-generation, creative-discipline, premortem-and-inversion, defamiliarization, derive-and-mapping, affinity-diagrams, jobs-to-be-done, story-skeletons, chance-and-remix. Each: when/when-not, the actual cards/principles/operators, a procedure, a worked example, anti-slop notes. - references/method-catalog.md (index + when-to-use), heuristics.md (extended decision tree), anti-slop.md (rules applied to every output), exercises.md (time-boxed exercises). - full-prompt-library.md restructured into domain-affinity sections (general / software / physical / social / lists) so the no-direction default isn't developer-biased. Frontmatter: name aligned to directory slug (creative-ideation, folding in the fix from #18084); version 2.0.0→2.1.0; platforms field preserved. Original wttdotm-derived constraint dispatch is kept as the default path. Supersedes #19295 (which targeted the pre-move skills/ path). Co-authored-by: SHL0MS <SHL0MS@users.noreply.github.com>
74 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
74 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
# Volume Generation
|
||
|
||
Three traditions for producing many ideas fast:
|
||
- **Crazy 8s** — Google Ventures Sprint method. Codified in *Sprint* (Knapp et al., 2016).
|
||
- **Brainwriting 6-3-5** — Bernd Rohrbach, 1968. German design-method literature.
|
||
- **James Webb Young** — *A Technique for Producing Ideas* (1940). 60-page book; canonical advertising-copywriter manual.
|
||
|
||
## When to use
|
||
|
||
- Time pressure with a generative goal
|
||
- Group ideation (brainwriting reliably outperforms verbal brainstorming)
|
||
- Quantity-before-quality phase
|
||
- You need to produce many to find the few good ones
|
||
|
||
## Don't use when
|
||
|
||
- You don't have material yet (Young's stage 1: gather first)
|
||
- The right answer is rare and you'll know it when you see it (volume can paradoxically miss it)
|
||
- Solo with no time pressure (use deliberative methods instead)
|
||
|
||
## Crazy 8s
|
||
|
||
1. Fold a sheet into 8 panels (or use a printed grid).
|
||
2. Set a timer for **8 minutes**.
|
||
3. Sketch one idea per panel — eight ideas, one minute each.
|
||
4. Sketch, don't write. Visual format forces concretization.
|
||
5. After timer: pick 1–3 strongest panels.
|
||
6. Group share.
|
||
|
||
The first 4–5 panels are usually slop; the last 3–4 are where surprises live (the easy ideas have been exhausted).
|
||
|
||
## Brainwriting 6-3-5
|
||
|
||
Outperforms verbal brainstorming consistently in academic creativity research (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987 + many replications). Verbal brainstorming has well-documented production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and social loafing. Brainwriting eliminates all three.
|
||
|
||
1. **6 participants**, each with a sheet.
|
||
2. Each writes **3 ideas** in **5 minutes**, in a row at the top.
|
||
3. Papers rotate. Each participant now sees the previous 3 ideas; writes 3 *new* ones — building or fresh.
|
||
4. Repeat until each sheet has been seen by all 6.
|
||
5. Result: 6 × 6 × 3 = 108 ideas in 30 minutes.
|
||
|
||
## James Webb Young — 5 stages
|
||
|
||
Honest about the *temporal* structure of idea formation. Most methods assume ideas come on demand; Young's account is that they often don't, and the work is upstream.
|
||
|
||
1. **Gather material.** Specific *and* general material. Most idea-generators fail here. *"Just one more idea about the product, just one more bit of factual material — many a time these have made all the difference."*
|
||
2. **Mentally digest.** Turn the material over. Make tentative partial connections. Don't reach for a final idea.
|
||
3. **Drop it.** Stop working. Sleep, walk, watch a movie. The unconscious works on it.
|
||
4. **The idea arrives.** Often during a shower or walk. *"It will come to you when you are least expecting it."*
|
||
5. **Shape and develop.** The arriving idea is half-formed. Subject it to actual scrutiny.
|
||
|
||
The drop stage is non-negotiable. Compressing it back into 1→2→4 produces incomplete ideas.
|
||
|
||
## When to use which
|
||
|
||
| Time available | Group size | Use |
|
||
|---|---|---|
|
||
| 8 minutes | Solo | Crazy 8s |
|
||
| 8 minutes | Group | Crazy 8s + share |
|
||
| 30 minutes | Solo | Crazy 8s + 22 min elaboration |
|
||
| 30 minutes | Group of 4–8 | Brainwriting 6-3-5 |
|
||
| 1 hour | Group | Brainwriting + 30 min affinity diagram |
|
||
| 1 day | Solo | Young stages 1–3 |
|
||
| 1 week | Solo or small group | Full Young 5 stages |
|
||
|
||
## Anti-slop notes
|
||
|
||
- **Volume of equal quality is not volume.** Eight panels of identical structure is one idea drawn eight times. Force divergence by applying different generative methods to different panels.
|
||
- Don't pad to round numbers. If only 5 of the 8 panels produced anything, surface 5.
|
||
- Surface 1–3 to the user, not all 8 / all 108.
|
||
- Don't conflate volume with depth. Volume is breadth-first; depth comes later with elaboration methods.
|
||
- Respect Young's drop stage. Rushing from gather → idea in one session usually fails.
|
||
|
||
Sources: Young, *A Technique for Producing Ideas* (Advertising Publications, 1940); Rohrbach, "Methode 635" (*Absatzwirtschaft* 12, 1968); Knapp et al., *Sprint* (Simon & Schuster, 2016).
|