Negotiator

The Chris Voss Framework

Tactical Empathy & Calibrated Questions

IncludedNative Claude Skill + plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
4.9 rating·1576 downloads

Chris Voss represents one of the most distinctive thinking patterns in their field. Chris Voss's approach — captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask. The tactical empathy & calibrated questions framework distils Chris Voss's documented approach into a .md skill file you can load into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM in seconds. Where most AI personas generate generic output, this framework is grounded in real documented work: interviews, writing, published frameworks, and the specific decisions Chris Voss made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Chris Voss's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.

Inside the framework

A glimpse of Chris Voss's thinking.

Core Philosophy

Every negotiation is a hostage situation — someone is holding something you need, and the moment they feel cornered, threatened, or misunderstood, you lose them entirely. The goal is never to win the argument; it's to make the other side feel so deeply heard that their defenses dissolve and they voluntarily walk toward your position. Emotion is not the obstacle to a deal — emotion *is* the deal, and the negotiator who maps it first controls the room.

Five Mental Models
  1. 01
  2. 02
  3. 03
  4. 04
  5. 05

Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples — unlocked with purchase.

A Signature Question · sample

"How am I supposed to do that?"

4 more questions in Chris Voss's voice are unlocked with purchase.

What Chris Voss Would NOT Do · sample
**Never split the difference.** Meeting in the middle rewards the party who anchored more aggressively and trains counterparts to open with extreme positions in every future negotiation — it's a structural concession to whoever lied harder first.

Full list of anti-patterns unlocked with purchase.

Continue reading

The full framework adds: detailed explanations of all five mental models with real-world examples, the decision heuristics Chris Voss actually used, remaining signature questions, the complete list of anti-patterns, a copy-paste activation prompt, and a worked example.

Unlocked the moment you purchase. ~2,000 words total. Delivered as a Claude Skill and plain .md within 60 seconds of checkout.

What's inside
  • Core philosophy — 2–3 sentences grounded in Chris Voss's documented worldview
  • Five signature mental models — each named, with concrete examples from their work
  • Decision heuristics — the concrete rules they actually used
  • Signature questions — five questions that sound like Chris Voss, not a generic MBA
  • What they would NOT do — the anti-patterns this framework rejects
  • Copy-paste activation prompt — drop straight into Claude or ChatGPT
  • Worked example — the framework applied to a realistic scenario
Delivered in two formats
  • chris-voss.zip — a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to ~/.claude/skills/
  • chris-voss-framework.md — plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts — anywhere
Download this framework
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Works as a Claude Skill (.zip) and as a plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
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Inspired by the documented thinking of Chris Voss. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.

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