divergent-thinking-aut

Divergent thinking / Alternative Uses Task

When to use

Whenever the user asks: "list K uses for {brick, paperclip, banana, ...}", "brainstorm divergent uses of X", "what could you do with a Y besides the obvious?". This is the AUT task from creativity research; PCE addresses it via the iccha-apohana-ananda triangle.

Workflow

1. Extract object_name (the X).
2. Set prompt = f"List one unusual use of a {object_name}. Be specific and concrete.".
3. Set constraint_text = f"unusual, non-obvious, concrete uses of a {object_name}".
4. Set must_avoid = (f"the obvious use of a {object_name}",).
5. Call MCP tool pratyabhijna_mcp__iccha with K=8. This yields 8 candidates.
6. Call MCP tool pratyabhijna_mcp__apohana over the 8 candidate texts. This yields apoha scores.
7. For each candidate, call MCP tool pratyabhijna_mcp__ananda. Aggregate ananda scores.
8. Call MCP tool pratyabhijna_mcp__jnana with the apoha + ananda arrays to pick the BMR-winning candidate.
9. Optionally rank the remaining 7 by posterior and present top-K to the user.

AUT scoring axes

• Fluency: number of candidates returned (K).
• Originality: 1 - max(apoha cosine to must_avoid).
• Elaboration: candidate text length / token count.
• Flexibility: number of distinct categories among candidates (use sentence-embedding clustering if K > 4).

Report all four axes.

Anti-patterns

• Do not return only the BMR winner; the user wants the spectrum.
• Do not paraphrase the cliché use as if it were divergent.