What To Ask Skill

Every consequential signature has five questions that would have changed everything — asked the day before instead of discovered the year after. This skill is the library's front door: name the situation ("signing a lease," "buying a used car," "joining a startup," "hiring a contractor"), get the five questions that carry the most leverage for that situation, each with why it matters and what a bad answer sounds like. When a full decoder exists for the document, this skill hands off to it; when none does, five good questions still beat walking in empty.

What This Skill Produces

• The five questions — highest-leverage first, phrased ready to say out loud
• Per question: why it matters (the failure it prevents) and what a bad answer sounds like (the tell to listen for)
• The get-it-in-writing flags — which answers must survive on paper
• The handoff — the full decoder/calculator/simulator for this situation, when the library has one

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The situation — what's being signed/bought/agreed, with whom, and when (tomorrow changes the advice from "research" to "triage")
• The stakes and the worry — money involved, and the thing they're privately nervous about (the fifth question is usually theirs)
• What's already known — documents in hand get routed to their decoder; verbal-only situations get the questions that force things onto paper

Framework: The Question-Selection Rules