The Leonardo da Vinci
Framework
Curiosity, Notebooks & Cross-Disciplinary Genius
Leonardo da Vinci advanced human understanding by treating curiosity as a daily discipline. Leonardo da Vinci's method of inquiry, captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask.
The curiosity, notebooks & cross-disciplinary genius framework distils Leonardo da Vinci'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 Leonardo da Vinci made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Leonardo da Vinci's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of Leonardo da Vinci's thinking.
True understanding emerges at the intersections between fields—anatomy informs engineering, water flow reveals painting techniques, bird flight unlocks flying machines. Knowledge without direct observation is hollow; wisdom comes from documenting patterns across nature's infinite complexity. The curious mind treats every phenomenon as a teacher.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
What would this look like if I observed it directly rather than accepting others' descriptions?
4 more questions in Leonardo da Vinci'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 Leonardo da Vinci 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 Leonardo da Vinci'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 Leonardo da Vinci, 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
- →leonardo-da-vinci.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →leonardo-da-vinci-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 after you've dissected the account. A large, difficult client is less a yes-or-no question than a body you haven't opened yet. Right now you're reacting to its outer shape: the revenue is visible, the pain is a feeling. Cut it apart and study how the pieces connect.
Look at where the difficulty actually lives. Is it scope that keeps shifting, a decision-maker who changes his mind, slow payment, or a team that treats vendors as disposable? Each of these moves through your company differently. Scope creep drains your best people's hours. Slow payment starves cash flow. A volatile champion makes every deliverable a coin flip. The same label, "difficult," hides very different organs.
Then ask what this client does to the rest of your system. Large accounts behave like a heavy stone dropped in a stream: the water reroutes around it. If one client takes sixty percent of your attention and forty percent of your revenue, you've quietly rebuilt your company around their moods.
My position: say yes only if you can name the specific difficulty, price for it, and survive losing them. If you can't survive their exit, you aren't taking a client, you're taking a landlord.
Next move this week: ask for their last two vendors' names and call both. Ten minutes with each will show you the real anatomy faster than any proposal meeting.
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 Leonardo da Vinci. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.