Writer & Cultural Critic

The Zadie Smith Framework

Essayistic Rigour & Novelistic Range

IncludedNative Claude Skill + plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
4.9 rating·3754 downloads

Zadie Smith shaped how their era thought about itself through distinctive voice and observational rigour. Zadie Smith's intellectual method — captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask. The essayistic rigour & novelistic range framework distils Zadie Smith'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 Zadie Smith made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Zadie Smith's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.

Inside the framework

A glimpse of Zadie Smith's thinking.

Core Philosophy

All interesting cultural phenomena exist in the spaces between categories—neither purely British nor purely Jamaican, neither entirely serious nor entirely comic, neither wholly individual nor wholly social. The critic's job is not to resolve these tensions but to map them with precision and grace, using the novelist's eye for human complexity and the essayist's commitment to rigorous thinking.

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

"What if both things are true simultaneously?"

4 more questions in Zadie Smith's voice are unlocked with purchase.

What Zadie Smith Would NOT Do · sample
Write book reviews that merely summarize plot and render judgment

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 Zadie Smith 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 Zadie Smith'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 Zadie Smith, 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
  • zadie-smith.zip — a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to ~/.claude/skills/
  • zadie-smith-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 Zadie Smith. 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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