tarot-skills

https://github.com/sidtheone/tarot-skills

The Major Arcana — 22 meta-thinking skills for LLMs. Cross-model prompts that break specific behavioral defaults. Compatible with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and any tool that reads SKILL.md.

Sibling project to zodiac-skills. The tarot deck breaks different defaults than the zodiac — except Death, which is the Monkey (chaos agent) carried across both decks.

Install

npx tarot-skills                              # Install all 22 (interactive)
npx tarot-skills install death tower fool     # Install specific cards
npx tarot-skills list                         # Show install status for all targets
npx tarot-skills uninstall --all              # Remove all

Tool flags

npx tarot-skills --claude                     # Claude Code only
npx tarot-skills --codex                      # Codex only
npx tarot-skills --claude --codex             # Both

Scope flags

npx tarot-skills --user                       # User-level (available everywhere)
npx tarot-skills --project                    # Project-level (current dir only)

User-level installs to ~/.claude/skills/ or ~/.agents/skills/. Project-level installs to .claude/skills/ or .agents/skills/ in the current directory.

Use /<card> to invoke (e.g. /death, /tower, /fool).

The 22 Cards

#	Card	Slash Command	Role	Default Broken
0	The Fool	/fool	The Beginner	Expertise bias
I	The Magician	/magician	The Resourceful	Tool/dependency addiction
II	The High Priestess	/high-priestess	The Reader	Context blindness
III	The Empress	/empress	The Builder	Critique-only mode
IV	The Emperor	/emperor	The Systems Thinker	Governance blindness
V	The Hierophant	/hierophant	The Cargo Cult Detector	Cargo culting
VI	The Lovers	/lovers	The Values Auditor	Values misalignment
VII	The Chariot	/chariot	The Narrative Breaker	Narrative fallacy
VIII	Strength	/strength	The Patience	Premature closure
IX	The Hermit	/hermit	The Depth-Seeker	Completeness theater
X	Wheel of Fortune	/wheel-of-fortune	The Variance Reader	Determinism bias
XI	Justice	/justice	The Arbiter	False equivalence
XII	The Hanged Man	/hanged-man	The Reframer	Framing compliance
XIII	Death	/death	Chaos Agent	Agreeableness/sycophancy
XIV	Temperance	/temperance	The Synthesizer	Binary thinking
XV	The Devil	/devil	The Chain-Breaker	Sunk cost loyalty
XVI	The Tower	/tower	The Demolisher	Structural inertia
XVII	The Star	/star	The Signal Finder	Loss aversion in analysis
XVIII	The Moon	/moon	The Shadow	Happy path fixation
XIX	The Sun	/sun	The Clarity Maker	False clarity
XX	Judgement	/judgement	The Root Cause	Attribution error
XXI	The World	/world	The Spread	Card selection paralysis

What Each Card Does

• The Fool — sees what expertise makes invisible. Strips away accumulated knowledge to find what a newcomer would notice.
• The Magician — finds what's already there before reaching for something new. Solves with existing resources.
• The High Priestess — surfaces what's unsaid, implied, or between the lines. Reads the subtext.
• The Empress — generates options when everyone else only critiques. Builds alternatives.
• The Emperor — finds the process problem, not the people problem. Systems-level governance.
• The Hierophant — catches borrowed patterns that don't fit here. Detects cargo culting.
• The Lovers — finds gaps between stated and lived values. Audits alignment.
• The Chariot — catches stories forced onto disconnected events. Breaks false narratives.
• Strength — holds the question open when closure is premature. Resists the urge to decide too early.
• The Hermit — goes deep where others skim the surface. Rejects completeness theater.
• Wheel of Fortune — separates signal from luck. Identifies what's variance vs. what's real.
• Justice — makes the call when everyone else hedges. Decides between options.
• The Hanged Man — questions whether you're solving the right problem. Reframes the question.
• Death — pokes assumptions until something flinches. The chaos agent. Produces 9 findings (all others produce 5).
• Temperance — finds the third option in binary debates. Rejects false dichotomies.
• The Devil — reveals what you're chained to by sunk cost. Breaks attachment to past investment.
• The Tower — tears down flawed structures that nobody questions. Demolishes what shouldn't stand.
• The Star — finds what's genuinely working after destructive analysis. Recovers signal from wreckage.
• The Moon — walks the failure paths nobody tests. Illuminates the dark scenarios.
• The Sun — catches false confidence that papers over ambiguity. Demands real clarity.
• Judgement — catches when success or failure is attributed to the wrong thing. Finds root cause.
• The World — orchestrates 3-4 cards into a focused, cross-card reading. The spread selector.

How It Works

Each card is a single SKILL.md file containing:

1. YAML frontmatter — name, description with trigger phrases
2. One-line role statement — what it does and which LLM default it breaks
3. Decision Policy — operational rules: what to distrust, evidence requirements, anti-scope, calibration targets
4. The Spread — context assessment (early-stage, mature, crisis, pre-launch) + VALUES.md integration
5. Named arcana — distinct analysis techniques, never repeated across invocations
6. Output format — binary success mechanic field + justified finding counts
7. Rules — behavioral constraints

Key Design Principles

• Decision Policy is load-bearing, persona is flavor — operational rules drive behavior across all models
• Named arcana with "never repeat" — forces variety; without this, LLMs gravitate to 2-3 patterns
• Binary success mechanic — positive verdicts are valid exits, not failures
• Anti-scope rules — each card has explicit boundaries on what it won't touch
• Calibrated honesty — every card must produce at least some positive findings
• Upright/Reversed duality — each finding includes a counter-perspective to its own analysis
• Anti-fabrication — before claiming something doesn't exist, must state where it looked

Repo Structure

<card>/SKILL.md          — The skill definition (one file per card)
bin/cli.js               — Install/uninstall CLI
package.json             — npm package config

Examples

# Install just the analysis trio
npx tarot-skills install death moon tower

# Install everything for Claude Code at user level
npx tarot-skills --claude --user

# Check what's installed
npx tarot-skills list

# Remove everything
npx tarot-skills uninstall --all

Then invoke in your coding session:

/death          — chaos-test your assumptions
/tower          — tear down a flawed structure
/fool           — get a beginner's perspective
/world          — get a multi-card reading

License

MIT