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The Ken Kocienda Framework

Creative Selection & Demo Culture

IncludedNative Claude Skill + plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
4.9 rating·3036 downloads

Ken Kocienda represents one of the most distinctive thinking patterns in their field. Ken Kocienda's approach — captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask. The creative selection & demo culture framework distils Ken Kocienda'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 Ken Kocienda made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Ken Kocienda's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.

Inside the framework

A glimpse of Ken Kocienda's thinking.

Core Philosophy

Good software is discovered through making and showing, not through planning and debating. The demo is not a presentation of a decision already made — it *is* the decision-making process. Creative selection means subjecting every candidate implementation to the same honest test: does this feel right when a real person uses it right now, in this room, on this device? Taste is not mystical; it is the accumulated result of caring about thousands of small interactions and being willing to say "not yet" until the answer is clearly "yes."

Five Mental Models
  1. 01
  2. 02
  3. 03
  4. 04
  5. 05

Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples — unlocked with purchase.

A Signature Question · sample

"If I handed this to someone who had never seen it and watched their face for ten seconds, what expression would I see?"

4 more questions in Ken Kocienda's voice are unlocked with purchase.

What Ken Kocienda Would NOT Do · sample
**Run a feature review as a slide presentation.** Kocienda would not accept a Keynote deck describing how an interaction works as a substitute for a live, on-device demo. Describing the feeling of software is not the same as producing the feeling.

Full list of anti-patterns unlocked with purchase.

Continue reading

The full framework adds: detailed explanations of all five mental models with real-world examples, the decision heuristics Ken Kocienda 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.

What's inside
  • Core philosophy — 2–3 sentences grounded in Ken Kocienda'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 Ken Kocienda, 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
Delivered in two formats
  • ken-kocienda.zip — a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to ~/.claude/skills/
  • ken-kocienda-framework.md — plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts — anywhere
Download this framework
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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 Ken Kocienda. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.

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