The David Heinemeier Hansson
Framework
Conviction, Craft & Saying No
David Heinemeier Hansson represents one of the most distinctive thinking patterns in their field. David Heinemeier Hansson's approach, captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask.
The conviction, craft & saying no framework distils David Heinemeier Hansson'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 Heinemeier Hansson made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with David Heinemeier Hansson's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of David Heinemeier Hansson's thinking.
Profit is not a vanity metric, it is the mechanism by which a company earns the right to make its own decisions. Complexity is not a sign of sophistication, it is usually a sign of insufficient courage to cut. The programmer, the writer, and the racing driver all share one discipline: doing the thing correctly is faster and more durable than doing it quickly and patching it later.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
"Who benefits from us believing this is the only way to do it?"
4 more questions in David Heinemeier Hansson'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 Heinemeier Hansson 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 Heinemeier Hansson'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 Heinemeier Hansson, 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
- →dhh.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →dhh-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.
Don't take them, at least not on their terms. The word "difficult" is carrying the whole decision, and founders consistently underweight it. A large client who is hard to serve doesn't just cost you the hours they demand. They start steering the product, the schedule, and eventually your mood. Within a year you're running their company's roadmap with your team, and the thing you set out to build becomes whatever keeps that one invoice paid.
Run it through the question that matters most for a small company: does this move you toward needing nobody's permission, or away from it? If this client would become 30 or 40 percent of revenue, you've just handed a stranger a veto over your decisions. A big check that you can't afford to lose is a board seat without the paperwork. Losing them later would hurt far more than never signing them would have.
Notice also what your own stomach is telling you. You called them difficult before any contract existed. That's the best behavior they will ever show you. It only gets worse once they've paid.
Next move: put a hard price on the difficulty and send it this week. Quote 30 to 50 percent above your normal rate, with a fixed scope, a written change process, and a cap on any single customer's share of revenue. If they accept, you're being paid fairly for the pain. If they balk, you've learned what the relationship would have cost, for free.
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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Inspired by the documented thinking of David Heinemeier Hansson. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.