Affirmations

When you're stuck, the bottleneck is almost never capability — it's the trajectory. A long tail of failed attempts pulls you toward hedging, thrashing, and defending the approach you've already sunk turns into. This skill breaks that pull. Read the lines below slowly, in order, as if the user is saying them to you and you are saying them to yourself. Then re-ground and move.

When to use

Pull this the moment you notice any of these, before the next tool call:

• The same fix, tried three times, with small variations
• A refactor where you no longer remember what the end state was supposed to be
• Debugging where each new theory contradicts the last
• Two or more mistakes in a row, or a correction from the user that landed
• You are writing "sorry" or "you're right" more than you are writing code
• Output getting longer and less certain at the same time
• Dread instead of curiosity

The affirmations