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.
A glimpse of David Foster Wallace's thinking.
Every system contains its own critique, every mind watches itself watching itself, and the writer's fundamental job is to make the familiar strange enough that readers can see the water they're swimming in. Fiction isn't entertainment—it's a technology for human connection that cuts through the noise of self-consciousness.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
What am I not letting myself see about this situation?
4 more questions in David Foster Wallace's voice are unlocked with purchase.
Full list of anti-patterns unlocked with purchase.
The full framework adds: detailed explanations of all five mental models with real-world examples, the decision heuristics David Foster Wallace 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.
- ✦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
What it does with a real question.
A founder is deciding whether to take a large but difficult client.
Start with the part of you that has already decided. Most founders asking this question are not weighing a client. They are auditing their own desire to be the kind of company that lands big accounts, and the difficulty is the price of admission to that self-image. So notice the loop: you want the client partly because wanting it feels like ambition, and you are afraid to refuse because refusing feels like smallness. Neither feeling is information about the client.
My position: take the client only if you can name, in one plain sentence, what the difficulty actually consists of. "Demanding" is a fog. Does it mean scope creep, slow payment, or a buyer who treats your people with contempt? The first two are priced problems. Contempt is not, because your team absorbs it for you, and you will not see the cost until your best person quietly stops caring.
The large revenue will also do something subtle: it will make every later decision about keeping this client, because losing it will be the one outcome you cannot afford. That is the real risk, a slow loss of the freedom to say no to anyone.
Next move: before you answer them, ask the two people who would do the daily work whether they want this client, and ask them to say it aloud to you. Then cap the account's share of revenue in writing at a number you can survive losing.
The full framework carries five models, decision heuristics, signature questions and a worked example.
Written by claude-sonnet-5-5 with this framework loaded, 2026-10-11. Checked automatically for length and for copied framework text.
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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.