Expansive Inquiry

What this is

Expansive Inquiry is a cognitive architecture for distributed intelligence. Most inquiry flattens a topic into a single voice. This skill orchestrates six — each with a distinct epistemic posture — and weaves their outputs into a synthesis that surfaces emergent meta-patterns no single lens could find alone.

The lineage:

• The original prototype was a React app (V4) that ran six specialized AI roles sequentially over a user-supplied topic and exported each stage as YAML-frontmatter Markdown.
• Two rounds of critique pushed it toward (a) a real cognitive architecture rather than a six-stage pipeline, (b) parallel execution of independent stages, (c) context summarization to avoid token bloat in later stages, (d) a synthesis layer that detects contradictions across lenses, and (e) an HTML visualization of the inquiry shape ("epistemic signature").
• This skill encodes the matured methodology. Claude IS the orchestrator. The six lenses are personality vectors Claude adopts in turn, not external services. No React app required.

When to invoke

Good targets:

• Open-ended thematic questions ("What is the role of ritual in distributed teams?")
• Strategic decisions where the user wants epistemic pluralism, not narrowing
• Dramaturgical / artistic / philosophical analysis where logic alone would flatten the subject
• Research synthesis where multiple disciplinary lenses are warranted
• Anything the user describes with words like "deeply", "from every angle", "chorus", "mythopoetic"