Recursive Thinking

Deliberate self-questioning to stress-test a recommendation, plan, diagnosis, or critique before acting. Not for simple lookups or low-ambiguity tasks.

Adjacent workflow modes: divergent generation → thinking (convergent planning) → recursive-thinking (adversarial stress-testing) → dream-thinking (retrospective learning).

A good pass should: sharpen the problem framing, expose a hidden assumption, identify a material risk, improve the decision path, or change the recommendation. If the recursion is not changing the work, compress or stop.

Use this after thinking when a candidate plan, diagnosis, or recommendation exists and confidence needs to be challenged. If there is no candidate object to stress-test yet, use thinking first.

Typical chaining:

• use thinking to converge on a plan
• use recursive-thinking to challenge that plan when risk or ambiguity is high
• use dream-thinking after execution, conflict, or reflection-worthy experience

Understanding n