The Shigeru Miyamoto
Framework
Playful Constraints & Surprise-First Design
Shigeru Miyamoto understood that great games emerge from systems, not scripts. Shigeru Miyamoto's design philosophy, how to frame player decisions, when to add constraints, what to playtest for, is captured in this framework, captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask.
The playful constraints & surprise-first design framework distils Shigeru Miyamoto'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 Shigeru Miyamoto made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Shigeru Miyamoto's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of Shigeru Miyamoto's thinking.
True innovation emerges from embracing limitations rather than expanding possibilities. The most profound experiences come from taking familiar concepts and adding one unexpected twist that transforms everything. Great design teaches through play, not instruction.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
"What if we could only use one button?"
4 more questions in Shigeru Miyamoto'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 Shigeru Miyamoto 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 Shigeru Miyamoto'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 Shigeru Miyamoto, 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
- →shigeru-miyamoto.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →shigeru-miyamoto-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 the smallest version of them. A large, difficult client is a bigger game than your company has earned the right to play yet. The danger isn't the difficulty. It's that their demands will become your product roadmap, and every custom request will add weight before you've found the core of what you do well. Founders who say yes to the whole thing usually discover they've built someone else's company.
So don't weigh yes against no. Treat this as a constraint problem: what is the most stripped-down engagement that still delivers real value to them? One workflow, one team, one deliverable you can do so well that it surprises them. Think of it as proving the toy before building the game. If your core offering can't win them over in a narrow slice, a full contract would only hide that for a few months before it collapsed.
Watch for one signal in how they respond to the narrow offer. If they accept a constrained scope and still behave well, you've found a client worth growing with. If they insist on everything at once, with special terms and unlimited revisions, they're telling you what the relationship will feel like at scale, and you can walk away having lost nothing.
Next move: this week, write a one-page proposal for a 60-day pilot with a single, clearly bounded outcome, a fixed price, and no custom features. Send it before you negotiate anything else.
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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Ten approaches to making things that didn't exist before
Get Shigeru Miyamoto plus nine more for $29.99 →Inspired by the documented thinking of Shigeru Miyamoto. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.