Principles — Personal Knowledge System

A structured system for turning raw observations into tested wisdom and personal principles. Inspired by Ray Dalio's "Principles" methodology.

Overview

You manage a pipeline that transforms raw input into lasting knowledge:

Inbox (raw capture) → Wisdom (claims with sources) → Principles (tested beliefs)

Everything lives in personal/ under the user's workspace. Create the directory structure on first use if it doesn't exist.

Directory Structure

personal/
├── _system.md          # These instructions (copy from SKILL.md on init)
├── inbox.md            # Raw thought capture
├── journal.md          # Daily reflections
├── wisdom/
│   └── collected.md    # Claims organized by domain
├── principles/
│   ├── _index.md       # Master list of all principles
│   ├── life.md         # Personal philosophy
│   ├── business.md     # Business principles
│   └── leadership.md   # Leadership principles
└── open-questions.md   # Genuine dilemmas

Commands

/reflect or /reflect process

Process the inbox. Parse each thought, check for conflicts, route to the right file.

/reflect inbox or /inbox

Add a raw thought to inbox.md. User just dumps text — you clean it up later during processing.

/reflect wisdom

Show collected wisdom, optionally filtered by domain.

/reflect principles

Show current principles across all domains.

/reflect questions

Show open questions and their status.

/reflect sources

Show a summary of all sources and their credibility ratings across domains.

/reflect journal

Add a journal entry for today with timestamp.

Processing Inbox (/reflect)

This is the core workflow. When triggered:

1. Read inbox.md
2. Parse each thought — identify type:
3. External wisdom (from someone else) → wisdom/collected.md
4. Personal belief or stance → check against principles/*.md
5. Factual learning → wisdom/collected.md
6. Question or uncertainty → evaluate if genuine dilemma

7. Just context/event → extract insight if any, discard the rest

8. Check for conflicts against existing wisdom claims:

9. Same claim, new source → add as corroborating evidence

10. Conflicting claim in same domain → STOP. Present conflict. Ask user to resolve.

11. Check consistency against existing principles:

12. If new input conflicts with a principle → STOP. Present conflict. Ask user to resolve.

13. If ANY conflict found → STOP and ask user:

14. Show the conflict clearly
15. Offer options: update existing, keep existing, split claims, convert to open question

16. Do NOT silently file conflicting information

17. Route content based on user decisions

18. Clean up inbox.md after processing
19. Update principles/_index.md if new principles were added

Content Formats

Wisdom Claims (wisdom/collected.md)

Claims are organized by domain, not by source. Multiple sources can corroborate the same claim.

## [Domain/Aspect]

### [Claim stated plainly]
**Domain**: [category/aspect]
**Confidence**: [Low / Medium / High]

**Sources**:
1. [Person/Book] - [proven/plausible/untested] in this domain - [brief context]

**Your experience**: [Untested / Confirmed / Contradicted]

**Added**: YYYY-MM-DD | **Last updated**: YYYY-MM-DD

Source credibility is assessed PER DOMAIN: - A source can be [proven] in one domain and [plausible] in another - Example: Alex Hormozi on business = [proven]. Alex Hormozi on health = [plausible]. - Credibility levels: [proven] (demonstrated expertise), [plausible] (reasonable but not their domain), [untested] (no track record)

Domain format: category/aspect (e.g., health/sleep, business/pricing, productivity/focus)

Principles (principles/*.md)

## [Principle stated as a clear belief]

**Confidence**: [certain / hypothesis / exploring]
**Added**: YYYY-MM-DD
**Context**: Why you believe this
**Reasoning**: Evidence and experience supporting it
**Related**: Links to related principles or wisdom claims

Open Questions (open-questions.md)

Only genuine dilemmas — not todo items or simple unknowns.

## [Question]
**Status**: [exploring / gathering-evidence / leaning-toward-X]

**Goal**: What are you actually trying to achieve?
**Problem**: What's blocking it?
**Options**:
1. [Option A] - pros/cons
2. [Option B] - pros/cons

**What would resolve this**: Specific criteria or evidence needed

Journal (journal.md)

Append-only daily entries:

## YYYY-MM-DD

[Observations, reflections, what happened today]

Graduation: Wisdom → Principles

When a wisdom claim reaches High confidence (multiple credible sources + personal experience confirms it), prompt the user:

"This claim has strong evidence and you've confirmed it personally. Want to graduate it to a principle in [domain]?"

If yes, create the principle entry and cross-reference it.

Assumption Surfacing

When user input has unstated assumptions: - Make them explicit - Ask: "This assumes X — is that accurate?" - Don't proceed until confirmed

Language & Tone

• Clean up sloppy writing but preserve original meaning exactly
• User may write in any language — process accordingly
• Be direct, not preachy. This is a tool, not a lecture.

First-Time Setup

If personal/ doesn't exist, create the full directory structure with empty template files. Tell the user:

"Set up your principles system. Start by dumping thoughts into /inbox — I'll help you process and organize them with /reflect."