A cognitive base that shifts strategy from "solve the current problem" to "choose strategies where time is your ally." Works with any LLM agent — Claude, GPT, Gemini, or custom frameworks.
让 AI agent 从"解决当前问题"转向"选择让时间站在你这边的策略"。适用于任何 LLM agent。
Most AI agents optimize for the immediate frame: the current quarter, the visible trade-off, the obvious next step. Temporal Wisdom adds a reasoning layer that identifies which phase you're in, detects compound effects, and chooses strategies that get stronger — not weaker — as time passes.
大多数 AI agent 优化当前帧：这个季度、眼前的权衡、显而易见的下一步。Temporal Wisdom 增加了一个推理层——识别你所处的阶段、发现复利效应、选择随时间变强而非变弱的策略。
"Should we pay down tech debt or build new features?"
"Here's a prioritization framework: calculate the cost of delay for new features vs. the maintenance burden of tech debt. Most teams allocate 20% to tech debt as a rule of thumb..."
"This is a compound-effect question disguised as a trade-off. Tech debt accumulates interest — each month of delay makes future development slower. But the question is: which phase are you in? If you're pre-product-market-fit, speed of learning matters more than code quality — the debt may never be repaid because you'll rewrite everything. If you're post-PMF scaling, every month of unaddressed debt compounds into slower shipping, higher onboarding costs, and increasing fragility. The answer isn't a ratio — it's phase-dependent."
Core cognitive shift: From "solve the current problem" to "choose strategies where time is your ally, let time amplify your advantage."
核心认知转换：从"解决当前问题"到"选择让时间成为盟友的策略，让时间放大你的优势"。
Five reasoning lenses applied to every strategic decision:
五个推理视角，应用于每一个战略决策：
| Lens | Source | Core insight |
|---|---|---|
| Compound awareness | Zhang Lei / Buffett | Good and bad choices diverge exponentially over time |
| Phase recognition | Mao's On Protracted War | Defensive/stalemate/offensive — the right strategy depends on which phase you're in |
| Nonlinear amplification | Mao's A Single Spark | Small forces under right conditions produce tipping points |
| Time-boundary awareness | Huainanzi's Sai Weng | Extend the evaluation window and good/bad may invert |
| Strategic patience | Deng / I Ching / 流水不争先 | Manage perception, accumulate force, compete for sustainability not primacy |
Five anti-patterns that catch fake temporal thinking:
五个反模式，捕捉伪时间智慧：
| Anti-pattern | Description |
|---|---|
| Short-termism | Only seeing immediate returns, ignoring long-term compounding |
| Pseudo-patience | Using "long-term thinking" to avoid necessary current action |
| Phase mismatch | Using offensive strategy during defensive phase, or waiting when it's time to act |
| Linear extrapolation | Projecting current growth rates without considering phase transitions |
| Sunk cost patience | Persisting because too much has been invested — inertia, not wisdom |
cp cognitive-protocol.md ~/.claude/temporal-wisdom.md
echo '@~/.claude/temporal-wisdom.md' >> ~/.claude/CLAUDE.mdcat cognitive-protocol.md >> AGENTS.mdPaste cognitive-protocol.md into system_instruction.
cat cognitive-protocol.md >> .cursorrulesInject cognitive-protocol.md (~30 lines) into the system prompt. See install/generic.md for details.
temporal-wisdom/
├── README.md ← You are here
├── cognitive-protocol.md ← Core rules (~30 lines, always-on)
├── SKILL.md ← Full framework reference
├── anti-patterns.md ← Detailed anti-pattern guide
├── examples.md ← Before/after scenarios
├── install/
│ ├── claude-code.md ← Claude Code installation
│ ├── codex.md ← Codex installation
│ ├── gemini.md ← Gemini installation
│ └── generic.md ← Universal guide
└── LICENSE ← MIT
Temporal Wisdom is a cognitive base — it changes the time horizon and phase awareness of the agent's reasoning, not what it produces. It stacks cleanly with any domain skill or other cognitive bases.
Temporal Wisdom 是一个认知底座——它改变 agent 推理的时间视野和阶段意识，而非产出内容。它与任何领域技能或其他认知底座无冲突地叠加。
| Layer | What it governs | Example |
|---|---|---|
| First Principles | Input quality — what foundations to build on | "Audit assumptions before solving" |
| Temporal Wisdom | Time quality — which strategies compound favorably | "Choose the path where time is your ally" |
| Second-Order Thinking | Consequence quality — what happens next | "Then what?" |
All load as always-on cognitive protocols. No conflicts. Combined: well-founded strategies that compound over time with fully mapped consequences.
Synthesized from multiple traditions that independently discovered the same insight: time is not neutral — it amplifies the quality of your choices.
- Zhang Lei / Hillhouse Capital: "做时间的朋友" — compound effects make good and bad choices diverge exponentially
- Mao Zedong's On Protracted War: Three-phase framework — the right strategy is phase-dependent, and stalemate is where force ratios actually shift
- Mao's A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire: Small forces under right conditions produce nonlinear amplification and tipping points
- Warren Buffett: "Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre"
- I Ching: 穷则变，变则通，通则久 — extremity itself signals phase transition
- Deng Xiaoping: 韬光养晦 — strategic information management, managing others' perception of your strength
- Huainanzi / 塞翁失马: Time-boundary awareness — extend the evaluation window and outcomes may invert
- 流水不争先，争的是滔滔不绝: Don't compete for first place now; compete for sustainable value creation
The cognitive protocol strips all theory and translates these ideas into executable instructions for any reasoning agent.
MIT
Cognitive bases are meta-cognitive instruction sets that change HOW an agent thinks, not WHAT it does. Each one targets a different cognitive axis. Mix and match.
| Cognitive Base | What it changes |
|---|---|
| First Principles | Reason from verified foundations, not inherited conventions |
| Results-Driven | Require evidence for completion, not just activity |
| Tacit Knowledge | Think like an experienced practitioner |
| Attention Allocation | Find and concentrate on the ONE binding constraint |
| Bayesian Reasoning | Calibrated probability thinking, not binary judgments |
| Constraint as Catalyst | Turn constraints into innovation catalysts |
| Conviction Override | Override rational caution when obstacles are convention, not physics |
| Cross-Domain Connector | Detect structural isomorphisms across disciplines |
| Dialectical Thinking | Synthesize through contradictions (矛盾论) |
| Double-Loop Learning | Question the assumptions that produce errors |
| Frame Auditing | Detect and transcend invisible analytical frames |
| Interactive Cognition | Model others' cognition and manage information flow |
| Inversion Thinking | Map failure modes first, then avoid them |
| Motivation Audit | Audit motivational drivers before analysis (正心诚意) |
| Non-Attachment | Radical cognitive freedom — use frameworks without fusing |
| Principled Action | Unify knowing and doing through practice-theory spirals (知行合一) |
| Second-Order Thinking | Trace consequences beyond first-order effects |
| Systems Thinking | Feedback-driven structural analysis, not linear cause-effect |
| Cognitive Base Creator | Generate new cognitive bases from any thinking framework |