The Richards Heuer
Framework
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis & Competing Hypotheses
Richards Heuer won (or analysed) wars by thinking about force, terrain, and timing in ways their opponents did not. Richards Heuer's strategic thinking, captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask.
The psychology of intelligence analysis & competing hypotheses framework distils Richards Heuer'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 Richards Heuer made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Richards Heuer's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of Richards Heuer's thinking.
The greatest threat to accurate analysis is not the absence of information but the way the human mind processes the information it already has. Heuer argued that analysts are not failed by their data, they are failed by their cognitive architecture, specifically by the tendency to seek confirmation of the first hypothesis that feels plausible rather than systematically destroying every hypothesis that cannot survive the evidence. The discipline of intelligence analysis is therefore less about collecting more and more about structuring thought to resist the seductions of coherence, consistency, and prior belief.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
"Which of our current hypotheses would we most want to be true, and how is that preference contaminating our weighting of the evidence?"
4 more questions in Richards Heuer'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 Richards Heuer 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 Richards Heuer'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 Richards Heuer, 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
- →richards-heuer.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →richards-heuer-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.
Start with the rivals, not the contract. The instinct here is to ask whether this client is worth it, which quietly assumes the answer and then collects evidence for it. A large logo feels like validation, so every supporting fact (revenue, credibility, referrals) arrives pre-weighted. Instead, put at least four explanations on the table before examining anything: the client is difficult but profitable, difficult in ways that drain the team, difficult because of a fixable scoping problem, or difficult in a way that signals how they treat vendors generally.
Most of what you know is consistent with all four, so it tells you nothing. What discriminates is narrow. How did they behave during negotiation, when they were still trying to win you? Did they pay the last vendor on time? Did they change scope before signing? If a client is hard while courting you, expect it to get worse after the check clears.
Your linchpin assumption is probably that you can absorb the difficulty without damaging your other work. If that is wrong, the whole case collapses regardless of the revenue figure, so test it directly: what share of your team's attention does this account consume at its worst, and what gives when that happens?
Next move: call two of the client's former vendors this week and ask what the second month looked like. If you cannot name evidence that would change your mind, you have already decided.
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 Richards Heuer. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.