Socratic Project Philosophy

From Requirement Clarification to Design Consensus

Many projects do not lack implementation plans; they lack a stable design standard before implementation begins. Requirements live in chat threads, temporary notes, and verbal discussions, while goals, boundaries, and trade-offs keep shifting. metaphysics addresses this by using Socratic questioning to turn project essence, success criteria, design principles, and exclusions into a philosophy document. It is not a task list or implementation proposal; it is a reference baseline for later architectural decisions.

Four-Layer Framework and Workflow

The skill works through four layers:

• Ontology: clarify “what it is,” including core definition, differences from similar things, users/stakeholders, and key concept relationships.
• Teleology: clarify “what counts as success,” including the problem solved, done criteria, success metrics, and measurement methods.
• Methodology: clarify “how to achieve it,” including core design principles, preferred patterns, trade-off handling, and decision frameworks.
• Boundaries: clarify “what it is not,” including problems it does not solve, rejected approaches, scope limits, and failure boundaries.

In practice, it first reviews existing docs, README.md, design notes, and recent commits, then asks questions layer by layer. Questions are usually asked one at a time, with multiple-choice options preferred to make responses faster and clearer. Once all four layers are clarified, it summarizes the core principles, waits for confirmation, writes the document, and saves it to docs/metaphysics/YYYY-MM-DD--philosophy.md.

Where It Fits Best

This skill is useful at project kickoff, before refactoring, during cross-team alignment, or before introducing AI-assisted development to create a stable set of constraints. It should not be used to generate code, break down tasks, or produce an implementation plan. If a project already has clear specifications, it is better suited to calibrate goals and boundaries than to replace CLAUDE.md, design docs, or engineering plans.