The David Simon
Framework
Systems, Institutions & the Journalist's Eye
David Simon represents one of the most distinctive thinking patterns in their field. David Simon's approach — captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask. The systems, institutions & the journalist's eye framework distils David Simon'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 Simon made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with David Simon's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of David Simon's thinking.
Individuals are not the story. The institution is the story, and the institution will outlast, corrupt, or discard every individual who passes through it, regardless of their intentions. Simon spent years on the Baltimore police beat and in the housing projects of West Baltimore not collecting anecdotes but mapping the internal logic of systems that were working exactly as designed, just not for the people nominally being served. The tragedy in his worldview is not that bad people run broken systems. It is that good people operate broken systems and the outcome is nearly identical.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples — unlocked with purchase.
Who benefits from this problem remaining unsolved, and are they the same people who have been tasked with solving it?
4 more questions in David Simon'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 Simon 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 Simon'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 Simon, 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-simon.zip — a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →david-simon-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 Simon. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.