In any working session long enough to matter, ideas drift. A suggestion gets repeated, reused as a premise, referenced again as an assumption, and eventually written into a specification — even though nobody explicitly approved it. This is decision drift: the silent promotion of material from suggestion to constraint, from constraint to architecture, from draft to artifact, all without a visible decision boundary. By the time the drift is visible, it has already shaped the output. Shaping Frame exists to make the crossing visible before it completes.Documentation Index
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What Shaping Frame Is
Shaping Frame is a Claude Desktop skill — a cognitive operating layer — that tracks epistemic weight across every turn of a working session. It does not operate only at write time. It runs continuously, watching how ideas move through the conversation: what is gaining weight, what is being cited as if it were decided, what came from an imported document that hasn’t been approved, and what Claude generated that you haven’t validated. When material crosses a structural threshold — when a proposal starts behaving like a premise, or a draft starts behaving like a spec — Shaping Frame surfaces a checkpoint and asks for an explicit decision before proceeding.The Four Distinctions
Shaping Frame separates materials that a normal conversation collapses together:- What is still a hypothesis. A proposal, a direction, a name someone floated — material in the open fan that has not been selected. It carries weight as a candidate, not as a decision.
- What has been decided. Material the operator explicitly approved, selected, corrected into, or used as a constraint. This is crystallized and can ground structural output.
- What Claude generated but you haven’t validated. In-session proposals start at low epistemic weight. Their weight rises only through operator action — approval, reformulation, selection, or use as a constraint. Without that action, they remain proposals, even if Claude has used them three times.
- What came from external material. Imported documents, transcripts, notes, and prior conversations are relevant because you brought them — but relevance is not approval. External material does not become a decision until you explicitly promote it.
Source Classes
Every piece of material in a session carries a source class that determines its initial weight and decision authority:| Class | Meaning | Decision authority |
|---|---|---|
OP | Current operator intent, correction, constraint, or decision | Decides direction |
EXT | Imported documents, transcripts, notes, or other external material | Relevant, but not approved by default |
AI | Claude-generated proposals inside the current session | Starts as a proposal |
MP | Model priors, conventions, and generic assumptions | Must not silently ground structural decisions |
DSK | State read from files, tools, or other documentary sources | Describes existing evidence; does not decide intent |
Weight States
Material moves through five primary states as its operational weight changes:| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
Spark | Raw intuition or early idea — worth noting, not yet worth evaluating |
Candidate | A possible direction in the open fan, not yet selected |
Tracked | Unapproved material that has crossed at least one threshold and is gaining operational weight |
Crystallized | Explicitly approved by the operator |
Rejected | Discarded and retained only to prevent accidental return |
What Shaping Frame Does Not Do
Shaping Frame is a decision-state tracker, not a general-purpose assistant layer. It is not:- A persistent memory system. It operates within the active conversation context. Nothing persists between sessions unless you carry it forward explicitly.
- A factual verification service. It can flag an element as needing verification, but the actual check must come from a file, tool, source, or your own judgment.
- A background hook. It does not intercept every Claude action. It fires only when material crosses a threshold or a surface trigger occurs.
- A file, code, or project-management tool. It has no access to your filesystem beyond what Claude Desktop already provides.
- An autonomous decision maker. It surfaces crossings and asks for decisions — it never makes them for you.
The Core Insight: Anti-Recency
The deepest problem Shaping Frame addresses is not forgetting — it is the illusion of decision through recency. In a conversation, the last thing said feels like the current position. A more recent formulation feels more authoritative than an earlier one. A more fluent phrasing feels more decided than a tentative one said five turns ago. None of that is true. Shaping Frame applies a hard anti-recency rule: a more recent formulation does not win merely because it is more recent. The last thing said is just the last thing said. Two elements in conflict remain in conflict until the operator resolves the conflict explicitly. No amount of conversational momentum merges them. The only exception is when the operator explicitly marks a formulation as a correction, revocation, or decision — in that case it wins not because it is recent, but because it carries operator authority. This is the principle that makes the rest of the skill possible. Without it, every checkpoint would eventually be overridden by the next fluent sentence.Shaping Frame reduces decision drift by creating friction at the points where unvetted material is becoming a decision. It does not eliminate drift. The skill operates in the semantic layer and depends on threshold clarity and consistent application. In long, fast, or heavily compressed sessions, some crossings will be missed. The goal is to catch the structurally important ones — the crossings where a proposal would otherwise silently become a constraint, a name, or a specification input without your approval.
Explore Further
Epistemic Weight
Understand how material gains and loses operational weight across a session and what forces drive promotion and demotion.
Source Classes
Explore the five source classes — OP, EXT, AI, MP, DSK — and how each one affects a session’s decision authority.
Quickstart
Install the skill, add the custom instruction anchor, and start your first tracked working session in minutes.
Cognitive Checkpoint
Learn how the dogana checkpoint fires, the four intensity levels it operates at, and when the pre-write gate engages.