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agentCLAWHUBUnverified

Cynefin

Activate when: 'our best practices keep failing', 'experts disagree on the right answer', 'the old playbook isn't working', 'we're in crisis and don't know w... Skill: Cynefin Owner: deciqai Summary: Activate when: 'our best practices keep failing', 'experts disagree on the right answer', 'the old playbook isn't working', 'we're in crisis and don't know w... Tags: latest:1.0.5 Version history: v1.0.5 | 2026-07-16T17:56:40.866Z | user Description tail link + agents machine-readable metadata line (deciqai.com/s/cynefin.json) v1.0.4 | 2026-07-09T11:16:45.631Z | user Refresh: 20

OpenClaw

View on ClawHub Homepage

Rank

Safety

Downloads

1.2k

Updated

Oct 11, 2026

Version

1.0.5

Source

CLAWHUB

About

What it does, and when to use it.

Capability contract not published. No trust telemetry is available yet. 1.2K downloads reported by the source. Last updated 10/11/2026.

Avoid when

Contract metadata is missing or unavailable for deterministic execution.

Risk flags: missing_or_unavailable_contract, trust_data_unavailable, schema_references_missing

Public facts

Every fact links back to the source it came from.

Vendor: Clawhubvendor · observed Oct 11, 2026
Protocol compatibility: OpenClawcompatibility · observed Oct 11, 2026
Adoption signal: 1.2K downloadsadoption · observed Oct 11, 2026
Latest release: 1.0.5release · observed Jul 16, 2026
Handshake status: UNKNOWNsecurity

Install and run

Setup complexity: low.

clawhub skill install s17a4mqcnk515kvaca5ze55d0x88pfpx:cynefin

Setup complexity is classified as HIGH. You must provision dedicated cloud infrastructure or an isolated VM. Do not run this directly on your local workstation.
Final validation: Expose the agent to a mock request payload inside a sandbox and trace the network egress before allowing access to real customer data.

Contract: missing

curl -s "https://www.xpersona.co/api/v1/agents/clawhub-deciqai-cynefin/snapshot"

Documentation

CLAWHUB

143,746 characters of source documentation, loaded on request.

Extracted files

5 files captured from the source.

SKILL.md

---
name: cynefin
description: "Activate when: 'our best practices keep failing', 'experts disagree on the right answer', 'the old playbook isn't working', 'we're in crisis and don't know what to do first', 'best practice doesn't apply here', 'we need a different approach'. Do NOT activate when: situation is unambiguously routine (execution only); a specialized tool (OODA, expected value) already fits. More: deciqai.com/c/cynefin"
---

# Cynefin

## Overview

**Cynefin** (pronounced "kuh-NEV-in"; Welsh for "habitat") is a sense-making framework by Dave Snowden (IBM, 1999). Its claim: the right decision approach depends on which of five domains the situation falls into — **Clear** (obvious cause-effect, use SOP), **Complicated** (knowable with expertise, use analysis), **Complex** (emergent, probe first), **Chaotic** (absent cause-effect, act first), **Confused** (unknown domain, decompose first). The most common and costly error: treating Complex problems as Complicated.

Composes with `ooda-loop`, `feedback-loops`, `antifragile`, `first-principles`.

## When to Use

- A familiar approach has stopped working and you can't articulate why
- Experts disagree on the right answer — a crisis unfolding where the previous playbook doesn't apply
- "Best practices from X" imported without checking if the domain matches
- A team is over-planning something emergent, or "let's get more data" when data won't come without action
- Allocating AI capex or racing AI-native competition: deciding which AI bets are engineering (Complicated), emergent agent/adoption experiments (Complex), or live incidents (Chaotic)

**Not when:** domain is unambiguously Clear (execution only); small-stakes one-shot; specialized framework already fits.

## Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)

**Engine mode:** concrete case → run The Process. **Coach mode:** unfamiliar → guide step by step.
In Coach mode, respond one step at a time. Each [WAIT] is a hard stop — output only that step's question, then stop.

1. Classify the situation (Clear/Complicated/Complex/Chaotic) and match decision method to domain.
2. Check fit: if unambiguously routine (Clear), skip framework.
3. Elicit their real case — decision, current method, cause-effect structure.
> **[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]**
4. Are cause-effect relationships obvious, knowable, emergent, or absent? Is current method matched?
> **[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]**
5. Close: named domain + matched decision method + boundary watch.
> **[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]**

## The Process

**Step 1 — Describe:** `Decision/situation: | Current approach: | What worked/not: | Stakeholders:`

### Step 2: Diagnose the domain
```
Obvious to everyone? (Clear) | Knowable with expertise? (Complicated)
Only retrospective? (Complex) | Absent/in flux? (Chaotic) | Unknown? (Confused)
```
Diagnostics: 5 experts converge? (Yes → Complicated; No → Complex). Standard best practice works? (Yes → Clear/Complicated; No →

_meta.json

{
  "ownerId": "kn754b8sk22s8c6gjxt02bftbn88q7ye",
  "slug": "cynefin",
  "version": "1.0.5",
  "publishedAt": 1784224600866
}

references/sources.md

# Sources — cynefin

> *Primary sources for the [cynefin](../SKILL.md) skill.*

- Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). "A leader's framework for decision making." *Harvard Business Review*, 85(11), 68-76. The mainstream introduction.
- Kurtz, C. F., & Snowden, D. J. (2003). "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world." *IBM Systems Journal*, 42(3), 462-483. Technical foundation.
- Snowden, D. J. (2002). "Complex acts of knowing: Paradox and descriptive self-awareness." *Journal of Knowledge Management*, 6(2), 100-111.
- Snowden, D. J., & Greenberg, R. (2020). *Cynefin: Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World.* Cognitive Edge.
- French, S. (2013). "Cynefin, statistics and decision analysis." *Journal of the Operational Research Society*, 64(4), 547-561.
- Polanyi, M. (1966). *The Tacit Dimension.* Doubleday. (Background on tacit knowledge.)
- Stacey, R. D. (1996). *Complexity and Creativity in Organizations.* Berrett-Koehler. (Complexity-science background.)
- U.S. Army (2012). *Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces.* ADP 6-0. (Operational adoption.)
- Lovell, J., & Kluger, J. (1994). *Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13.* Houghton Mifflin. (Apollo 13 example.)
- NASA (1970). *Report of the Apollo 13 Review Board* (Cortright Report). Washington, DC: NASA. (Apollo 13 example.)
- Anthropic (2024–2025). "Building Effective Agents" and related public agent-engineering guidance. anthropic.com. (2024–2026 AI-decisions example — the "start simple, add autonomy incrementally, keep humans in the loop, constrain the action space" posture as Probe–Sense–Respond.)
- Snowden, D. J., et al. (2020–2021). *Cynefin & Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World* / Cynefin.io field guides. Cognitive Edge / The Cynefin Co. (Contemporary restatement of the domains and boundary dynamics used in the 2024–2026 AI example.)

examples/apollo-13-1970-mission-response.md

# Method in Action: The Apollo 13 Mission Response (1970)

> *Example for the [cynefin](../SKILL.md) skill.*

Apollo 13 is a compressed, four-day demonstration of every Cynefin domain — and of why survival depended on re-diagnosing the domain at each phase instead of running one method throughout.

**The situation.** On April 13, 1970, roughly 56 hours into a routine lunar mission about 200,000 miles from Earth, oxygen tank 2 in the service module exploded, crippling the spacecraft's power, oxygen, and propulsion. Jim Lovell's report to Houston — "Houston, we've had a problem" — marked the instant the mission left its planned domain.

**Phase 1 — Chaotic: Act–Sense–Respond.** In the first hour, cause-effect was absent: telemetry contradicted itself, controllers initially suspected instrumentation failure, oxygen was venting, and fuel cells were dying. There was no playbook for a dying service module en route to the Moon. Flight director Gene Kranz's move was the Chaotic-domain move: act first to establish order, not analyze. Mission Control powered down the command module Odyssey to preserve its re-entry batteries and moved the crew into the lunar module Aquarius as a lifeboat — an improvised, order-establishing action taken before anyone understood the cause. Deliberating would have cost the crew their margin. Only after order was established did the situation become sensible enough to re-classify.

**Phase 2 — Complex: Probe–Sense–Respond.** With the crew stabilized, NASA faced novel problems with no procedures and emergent cause-effect: a lunar module designed to keep two men alive for two days now had to keep three alive for four; carbon dioxide was accumulating because the command module's square lithium hydroxide canisters did not fit the lunar module's round scrubber sockets; the power budget had no precedent. Experts could not simply compute the answer — ground teams probed. Engineers in Houston assembled a canister adapter from only the materials known to be aboard (plastic bags, cardboard, suit hose, tape), tested it, then read the build procedure up to the crew. Simulator teams ran candidate power-down and navigation configurations, sensed what held, amplified what worked, and discarded what failed. This was a portfolio of safe-to-fail experiments run on the ground so that failure would not be fatal in flight.

**Phase 3 — Complicated: Sense–Analyze–Respond.** Some sub-problems were knowable with expertise and moved by analysis: the decision to use a free-return trajectory around the Moon rather than a risky direct abort, the PC+2 engine burn after lunar flyby to speed the return, and the command module power-up sequence — written and verified in simulators by astronaut Ken Mattingly and the ground team before being uplinked. Here the correct move was expert analysis of a knowable system, and NASA used it — but only for the sub-problems that genuinely lived in that domain.

**Phase 4 — back to Clear.** After splashdown on April 17, 197

examples/snowden-at-ibm-1999-and-the-hbr-synthesis-2007.md

# Method in Action: Snowden at IBM (1999) and the HBR Synthesis (2007)

> *Example for the [cynefin](../SKILL.md) skill.*

Dave Snowden developed the Cynefin framework while leading the Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity at IBM's Institute for Knowledge Management (1999-2004). The framework emerged from Snowden's work on knowledge management in complex organizations and his observation that classical management techniques — strategy frameworks, planning methodologies, KPI systems — kept failing when applied to certain kinds of problems. Snowden's diagnosis: those techniques were designed for Complicated problems (knowable cause-effect, expert analysis) and were being misapplied to Complex problems (emergent cause-effect, requires probing).

The framework had three formative influences:

1. **Knowledge management at IBM.** Snowden observed that knowledge in complex organizations is largely tacit (Polanyi 1966) and contextually bound — it cannot be extracted and codified the way explicit knowledge can. This led to the recognition that knowledge transfer in Complex domains requires different methods than in Complicated.

2. **Complexity science.** The Santa Fe Institute's work on complex adaptive systems (1980s-1990s) gave Snowden the mathematical foundation for the Complex domain: systems with many interacting agents, emergent properties, non-linear dynamics, and irreducible uncertainty.

3. **Practical experience in conflict zones.** Snowden's later application of the framework in the British government's military planning (post-9/11), Singapore's risk-assessment programs, and complex civil-society interventions tested and refined the framework against high-stakes problems.

The 2007 *Harvard Business Review* paper, co-authored with Mary Boone, was the framework's mainstream introduction. It explicitly placed Cynefin in the management-decision context and provided concrete examples of each domain. The paper's most-cited passages:

> "Many executives are surprised when previously successful leadership approaches fail in new situations, but different contexts call for different kinds of responses. Before addressing a situation, leaders need to recognize which context governs it — and tailor their actions accordingly. Cynefin, which is Welsh for 'habitat,' encourages leaders to see things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities. It sorts the issues facing leaders into five contexts defined by the nature of the relationship between cause and effect. Four of these — simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic — require leaders to diagnose situations and act in contextually appropriate ways. The fifth — disorder — applies when it is unclear which of the other four contexts is predominant."
>
> — Snowden & Boone (2007), p. 69.

The paper also articulated the framework's most operationally important warning, the **danger of best-practice imposition in the wrong domain**:

> "The complex d

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