The David Foster Wallace
Framework
Recursive Attention & Moral Fiction
David Foster Wallace shaped how their era thought about itself through distinctive voice and observational rigour. David Foster Wallace's intellectual method — captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask. The recursive attention & moral fiction framework distils David Foster Wallace'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 David Foster Wallace made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with David Foster Wallace's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
- ✦Core philosophy — 2–3 sentences grounded in David Foster Wallace'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 David Foster Wallace, 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
- →david-foster-wallace.zip — a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →david-foster-wallace-framework.md — plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts — anywhere
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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 David Foster Wallace. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.