From ecology-skills
Generate candidate hypothesis notes from tensions already in the vault. Use this skill when the user says "forge hypotheses", "generate candidate hypotheses", "what hypotheses can I build from my vault", "find connections for my recent idea notes", "what tensions in my concept notes could become hypotheses", "run hypothesis-forge", or any request to turn accumulated vault evidence into new falsifiable claims. Vault-internal only — no web or literature search. Works by scanning concept-note Tensions/Open questions, Counter-claims fields in atomic notes, changed_my_thinking papers, and recent idea notes, then proposing 2–5 candidate hypotheses pre-linked to supporting and contradicting evidence, ready to save using the Hypothesis Note Template.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/ecology-skills:hypothesis-forgeThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Hypothesis generation from vault-internal evidence. This skill surfaces the intellectual tension already sitting in the vault — in concept notes, atomic notes, and idea notes — and turns it into draft hypothesis notes ready to file.
Hypothesis generation from vault-internal evidence. This skill surfaces the intellectual tension already sitting in the vault — in concept notes, atomic notes, and idea notes — and turns it into draft hypothesis notes ready to file.
Vault-internal only. No web search, no external literature lookup. Every citekey in the output must already exist in the vault.
Hypotheses don't usually arrive as revelations — they accumulate as unresolved tensions across many papers. A concept note's "Tensions / unresolved" section captures exactly this: places where the evidence pulls in different directions. Atomic notes' Counter-claims fields record where a paper pushes back on the vault's emerging views. Papers marked changed_my_thinking: yes signal that the evidence forced a revision of priors. Recent idea notes capture half-formed hunches that deserve formalisation.
This skill collects all four signals, synthesises them into candidate hypotheses, and formats each one as a ready-to-file hypothesis note stub (using Templates/Hypothesis Note Template.md). AG then reviews the candidates and decides which to promote by saving the file to Ideas/.
Use the Glob and Read tools (or bash if faster for large sets) to collect four evidence streams. Do all four in parallel.
Find all concept notes: type: concept-note in frontmatter, living in Ideas/.
For each concept note, extract:
Grep for Counter-claims: across all atomic notes (exclude Ideas/, Zotero_import/, Templates/, skills/, planning docs). Keep only entries where the Counter-claims field is non-empty (not — and not blank).
For each non-empty Counter-claims entry, record:
—)Grep for changed_my_thinking: yes across all atomic notes.
For each, read the note's "What this changes for me" section and "Main findings" — these notes contain the vault's revised priors and are the richest source of hypothesis seeds.
Find all notes with type: idea in Ideas/. Read each one fully. A recent idea note (created in the last 30 days, or whichever exist if the vault is young) is especially valuable — it may contain an incipient falsifiable claim that just needs formalisation.
With the four evidence streams in hand, reason across them to identify 2–5 hypotheses that:
Ideas/ for existing Hypothesis - *.md files. If a candidate duplicates an existing note, skip it or propose it as a refinement rather than a new file.Prioritise quality over quantity. Three strong candidates beat five weak ones. A strong candidate has:
Present the candidates in the conversation before writing any files. For each candidate:
### Candidate N — [Short claim]
**Claim:** [One falsifiable sentence]
**Supporting papers:** [citekey1], [citekey2] — one line on why each supports
**Challenging papers:** [citekey3] — one line on the challenge
**Linked concepts:** [[Concept note name]] (from Ideas/)
**Drawn from:** [which evidence stream: tension in concept-note X / counter-claim in citekey Y / changed_my_thinking: citekey Z / idea note: "Idea - ..."]
**Prediction:** [What observable outcome would distinguish this hypothesis from the null?]
**Rough next step:** [Most immediate testable action — dataset, analysis, or literature gap to fill]
Citekey accuracy: Every citekey must be derived from the actual filename of an existing vault note (the part before —). Never construct a citekey from scratch. If uncertain, state the full note title instead.
After presenting all candidates, ask: "Which of these would you like to save as a hypothesis note? I can write any of them to Ideas/ now."
If AG confirms one or more candidates, write each as a hypothesis note file using the template structure:
File location: Ideas/
File name: Hypothesis - <short claim in sentence case>.md — 4–6 word claim, no full stop
Frontmatter fields:
type: hypothesis
status: candidate
confidence: low # start low; AG upgrades as evidence accumulates
created: YYYY-MM-DD # today's date
linked_concepts: # wikilinks to concept notes that ground the hypothesis
- "[[Concept name]]"
supporting_papers: # citekeys (verbatim from vault filenames)
- citekey1
contradicting_papers:
- citekey3
linked_project: "" # leave blank; AG fills in
linked_grant: "" # leave blank; AG fills in
tags: [hypothesis, topic-tag1, topic-tag2] # topic tags from Vocabulary.md only
Body sections (follow the Hypothesis Note Template exactly):
[[wikilink]] and state why it supportsTags: Always hypothesis first, then 1–2 topic tags from Vocabulary.md. Do not add the year. Do not invent tags.
After writing any hypothesis note, update index.md:
note_count in the frontmatter.updated date.C:\Users\agre6595\OneDrive - The University of Sydney (Staff)\Obsidian\Ecology\.Invoke this skill when the user says any of the following:
Provides UI/UX resources: 50+ styles, color palettes, font pairings, guidelines, charts for web/mobile across React, Next.js, Vue, Svelte, Tailwind, React Native, Flutter. Aids planning, building, reviewing interfaces.
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npx claudepluginhub agreenville/claude-skills --plugin ecology-skills