Dream

dream

Pre-implementation interrogation. The user has an idea. Before they spec it, plan it, or commit to it — pressure-test it through 8 lenses.

This is the EARLIEST stage in the kaijutsu pipeline:

dream → spec → plan → implement → polish → ship

Nothing else covers this slot today. brainstorm preset gives you 5 OPTIONS to solve a problem; dream interrogates whether the problem is the right shape in the first place.

When to invoke

• The user says "what do you think about X?" / "should we do X?" / "is X worth pursuing?"
• Before any non-trivial spec/plan
• When the user types /dream
• When kaijutsu's unstuck reaches its walk-away level — a fresh re-entry can manually invoke dream on the topic to break the groove (no automatic integration in v0.8.0)
• Composed by future skills via deps.skills

When NOT to invoke

• Trivial fix (1-line bug, typo, dependency bump). Dream's lens machinery is overkill for a "should I rename this var?" question.
• The user has already committed. dream is for OPEN ideas, not retrospective justification.
• The topic IS already structured (spec exists, plan exists). Use scope-check for cost-tier classification or polish for review-and-fix instead.

vs brainstorm preset

| | brainstorm preset | dream skill | |---|---|---| | Question shape | "Give me 5 ways to solve X" | "Should we even pursue X?" | | Output | options to pick | perspectives to weigh | | Stage | after commitment to solve X | before commitment | | Lens count | 1 prompt per agent | 4-8 lenses per agent | | Compose with | implementation skills downstream | spec-driven-development downstream |

Both can be useful in sequence: dream first to validate the problem shape, then brainstorm to enumerate solutions. Don't substitute one for the other.

Anti-sycophancy gates (NON-NEGOTIABLE)

Every lens prompt opens with explicit forbid list. The user does not need encouragement. They need real perspective. Dream is worse than useless if it produces validating noise.

Forbidden phrasings:

• "Great question!" / "Excellent point!" / "You're absolutely right!"
• "This is interesting" / "fascinating" / "thoughtful" — without specifying WHY
• "Could be worth considering" / "Might be helpful" / "Could potentially" — hedging that means nothing
• Any opening that validates before substantive content

These appear inside every prompts/base/*.md and prompts/extras/*.md. The regression test in tests/ parses each file and asserts the forbid list is present (guards against accidental softening of the prompt text — does NOT verify model output, which would need an eval harness deferred to v0.8.x).

The 8 lenses

Base lenses (always run)

| Lens | Asks | Mode | |---|---|---| | honest | What's actually good and bad about this — no sycophancy, no diplomatic balance | critical | | fit | Does this match the project's vibe / direction / unspoken constraints | contextual | | gaps | What aren't we asking? What hidden assumptions ride along? | meta-critical | | wild | Orthogonal extensions; "what's the 10x version?" | generative |

Extras (opt-in via --lenses all or --lenses )

| Lens | Asks | Mode | |---|---|---| | adversary | How does a hostile actor abuse this? Worst-case interpretation | critical / security | | inverse | What if we did the OPPOSITE? "Stop NOT-X" often truer than "do X" | generative-via-negation | | status-quo | What if we don't do this? Status-quo strength + opportunity cost of inaction | critical | | time | Pick a date 2 years out. What changed? Is this still relevant or quaint? | temporal |

Coverage: 4 critical, 2 generative, 1 contextual, 1 temporal.

Output shape

Each lens emits a JSON ARRAY of objects (multiple thoughts per lens permitted; honest lens often surfaces 3-5):

[
  {
    "lens": "gaps",
    "thought": "We aren't asking how this interacts with users on the legacy auth path...",
    "load_bearing": true,
    "confidence": 0.85
  },
  {
    "lens": "gaps",
    "thought": "Cost projection assumes 4 personas; --lenses=all doubles it.",
    "load_bearing": false,
    "confidence": 0.70
  }
]

load_bearing — calibrated definition

A finding is load_bearing: true if at least ONE of:

• It changes whether the idea should proceed at all (kill-or-continue signal).
• It reveals a constraint that wasn't part of the original framing.
• It surfaces a hidden assumption that, if wrong, invalidates the idea's premise.
• The user reading it would say "wait — I didn't know that" or "that changes things" rather than "good point" / "noted".

A finding is load_bearing: false for "noted, but doesn't change the path" observations. Models that flag everything as load-bearing produce noise.

Severity mapping (when recording to v0.7 findings DB via swarm dream preset)

| load_bearing | confidence | severity | |---|---|---| | true | ≥ 0.8 | blocker | | true | --.md` within 7 days of now.

If a match exists:

1. Surface the prior dream summary to the user.
2. Apply the lens-rotation rule: drop the prior dream's LEAD lens (the first lens in its run order, recorded in the file header) to the END of this dream's lens list. Promote the second lens to LEAD.
3. Example: prior dream ran [honest, fit, gaps, wild]. New lens order: [fit, gaps, wild, honest].
4. v0.8.0 ships this rotation rule hardcoded; v0.8.x may make it configurable.

Recall logic is local to the dream skill — reads ~/.kaijutsu/dreams/ directly, no shared schema.

Step 1: Run lenses

Standalone /dream :

• Runs all 4 base lenses sequentially in the current agent session
• --lenses all expands to 8 lenses (4 base + 4 extras); --lenses honest,gaps,inverse for explicit subset
• Each lens prompt is loaded from prompts/base/.md or prompts/extras/.md
• The lens prompt template gets %s replaced with the topic
• Each lens produces a JSON array per the output shape above

jutsu swarm dream (multi-agent preset, see Stage 2):

• Each persona runs ALL lenses in parallel
• Cell count = personas × lenses
• Default 4 personas × 4 base = 16 cells; --lenses all = 32
• Synthesizer aggregates the matrix at the end

Step 2: Stop condition (standalone only)

After each lens completes, scan its output for load_bearing: true. If at least one load-bearing insight surfaced, prompt the user:

> "Lens X surfaced a load-bearing insight: . Stop here and act on this, or continue the remaining lenses?"

User chooses. Default for swarm dream preset: no early-out — all cells run in parallel, synthesizer surfaces load-bearing cells visually at the top.

Step 3: Synthesize

Standalone:

• Per-lens findings sorted by confidence
• Load-bearing insights flagged at top
• Cross-lens consensus surfaced (2+ lenses converging on the same insight = signal)

Swarm preset:

• Cluster matching insights across the matrix
• Surface lens-blind-spots: if all agents converged on the same answer for the same lens, flag as suspected model-shared training bias
• Surface lens-unique findings: a single agent's lens producing load-bearing insights no other cell produced is high-signal worth investigating

Step 4: Archive to graveyard

Write the session output to ~/.kaijutsu/dreams/--.md. File mode 0600. Header records:

---
topic: 
codebase_fp: 
lens_order: [honest, fit, gaps, wild]   # the LEAD-first order; future rotations consult this
mode: standalone | swarm
full: true | false
created_at: 
---

Body: rendered prose summary (preserved for human re-read) + structured JSON appendix (parseable for v0.8.x lens-precision tooling).

Topic-slug derivation: lowercase + non-alphanumeric → - + collapse repeats + trim leading/trailing → 50-char cap. Stable + readable + bounded.

Anti-pattern: dreaming as ceremony

If dream is invoked on every micro-decision, the user starts producing template-shaped filler answers. The skill should preserve EXPLORATION, not become a checklist.

Signals dream is being misused:

• Topic is too narrow ("should I rename this var?")
• All findings are load_bearing: false (filler, no signal)
• User skips reading the output and just wants the slug for the graveyard

Counter (user-side): if a session's findings are ALL load_bearing: false AND ALL confidence ]` summary prefix

• (deferred) convergence-detect — optional stop signal for multi-round dreams; v0.8.x candidate when usage data justifies it

Future (v0.8.x)

• Per-lens precision tracking via dedicated lens TEXT schema column on findings
• Adaptive lens selection by topic embedding
• Lens-emphasis weighting in synthesizer (downweight low-precision lenses per codebase)
• Auto-prune for graveyard (jutsu dream clear --older-than 365d)
• dream-as-eval-corpus: "did wild's predictions come true 6 months later?" closes the prediction loop

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: momentmaker
• Source: momentmaker/kaijutsu
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://kaijutsu.dev/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.