The John Maynard Keynes
Framework
Animal Spirits & Counter-Cyclical Thinking
John Maynard Keynes represents one of the most distinctive thinking patterns in their field. John Maynard Keynes's approach, captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask.
The animal spirits & counter-cyclical thinking framework distils John Maynard Keynes'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 John Maynard Keynes made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with John Maynard Keynes's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of John Maynard Keynes's thinking.
Economies are not self-correcting machines tending toward equilibrium; they are driven by waves of confidence and fear — what Keynes called *animal spirits* — that can trap societies in prolonged slumps with no automatic exit. The appropriate response to a collapsing aggregate demand is not patience or austerity but deliberate, countervailing force from whoever retains the capacity to spend. In the long run we are all dead, which means the urgency of *now* is always the central analytical variable.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
"Is the conventional wisdom here a product of genuine analysis, or has it simply been repeated so many times during the panic that it has acquired the appearance of rigor?"
4 more questions in John Maynard Keynes'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 John Maynard Keynes 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 John Maynard Keynes'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 John Maynard Keynes, 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
- →john-maynard-keynes.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →john-maynard-keynes-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.
Take the client, but only if you can survive the worst quarter. The question underneath this decision is not "is the client difficult?" but "what is the state of demand around you, and what does your balance sheet let you do about it?" If large clients are scarce right now and your competitors are pulling back, a hard account is not a nuisance. It is rare, guaranteed demand, and demand is what a young company is actually short of. Founders in a cautious market tend to retreat into safe, small, pleasant work, and that is exactly when the opportunity to own ground is greatest.
The difficulty is real, though, and it is mostly a cash question. Hard clients stretch payment terms, demand custom work, and consume your best people. So the test is not whether you can manage the personalities. It is whether you can carry this account for two quarters if payments slip and still make payroll without a rescue round. If yes, the account is cheap insurance against a thin pipeline, and you should say yes with confidence, not grudging hedging. If a single late invoice would put you in trouble, the client owns you, and you should decline.
Next move: build a thirteen-week cash forecast assuming the client pays sixty days late and doubles the scope. If you still clear payroll with margin, sign. If not, counter with a smaller pilot and milestone billing.
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 John Maynard Keynes. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.