Show HN: CC Founder Decision Engine

A decision operating system for startup founders, powered by Claude Code. Synthesizes the wisdom of 25+ legendary founders, investors, and thinkers into an interactive AI advisor that helps you make the highest-leverage decisions at every stage of building a company.

This is not a reading list. It's a decision engine — an interactive system that:

• Routes your decisions through battle-tested frameworks from the world's best founders
• Challenges your assumptions before you commit
• Runs pre-mortems on your plans before they fail
• Evaluates your startup through investor eyes
• Keeps you honest with weekly and quarterly checklists

It runs as a Claude Code project. When you boot it up, Claude becomes a strategic co-founder who has internalized the decision-making of Paul Graham, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Naval Ravikant, Warren Buffett, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and 15+ others.

cd ~/decision-engine
claude

That's it. The CLAUDE.md

kernel loads automatically and transforms Claude into your founder advisor. Then use slash commands:

/decide should I pursue enterprise or SMB customers first?
/build an AI tool that automates bookkeeping for freelancers
/pivot we've been at this for 8 months with 200 users but no growth
/hire considering bringing on a VP of Sales at Series A
/raise thinking about raising a $3M seed at $15M post
/contrarian a marketplace connecting local chefs with home diners
/premortem launching in 3 new cities simultaneously next quarter
/weekly

Specialized sub-agents for deeper analysis. Claude Code can invoke these automatically or you can request them.

Ask Claude to invoke agents directly:

"Run the contrarian agent on my idea for an AI writing assistant"
"Have the investor-lens agent evaluate my startup as if I'm pitching at a partner meeting"
"I need a pre-mortem on our decision to go all-in on enterprise sales"

The decision engine is built on 6 research files totaling 185K+ of distilled, actionable frameworks:

Seven cross-cutting principles that ALL the greats share, extracted from the full research:

Focus Is Subtraction— Jobs (350→10), Musk (delete algorithm), Bezos (Day 1), Chesky (COVID cuts), Buffett ("say no to almost everything") - The Leverage Hierarchy— Code/media > capital > labor > your time. Always push toward higher leverage. (Naval) - The Moat Imperative— Network effects > switching costs > tech > brand > scale. If a billionaire could destroy you, fix that first. (Buffett, Thiel, a16z) - The Speed Doctrine— 70% info is enough for reversible decisions. "If the schedule is long, it's wrong." (Bezos, Musk, Collison, Altman) - The People Equation— First 5 hires set the company's permanent ceiling. Barrels > ammunition. Integrity is non-negotiable. (Jobs, Rabois, Buffett) - The Contrarian Imperative— If everyone agrees, the opportunity is gone. The best ideas look wrong to most smart people. (Thiel, Graham, Buffett, Dixon) - The Compounding Principle— Always choose the option that builds value over time. Short-term thinkers are your competition. (Naval, Buffett, Bezos, Huang)

╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║            HIGHEST LEVERAGE DECISION RULES                ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║                                                           ║
║  1. SUBTRACT FIRST (Jobs, Musk, Bezos)                   ║
║     → What should NOT exist? Delete it.                   ║
║                                                           ║
║  2. SPEED > PERFECTION (Bezos, Musk, Collison)           ║
║     → 70% info is enough. Decide. Iterate.               ║
║                                                           ║
║  3. SEEK ASYMMETRY (Naval, Buffett, Thiel)               ║
║     → Capped downside + unlimited upside = go.           ║
║                                                           ║
║  4. BUILD MOATS (Buffett, Thiel, Ellison)                ║
║     → If a billionaire could destroy you, fix that.      ║
║                                                           ║
║  5. HIRE BARRELS (Rabois, Jobs, Musk)                    ║
║     → One barrel > ten ammunition.                       ║
║                                                           ║
║  6. COMPOUND EVERYTHING (Naval, Buffett, Bezos)          ║
║     → Choose the option that builds over time.           ║
║                                                           ║
║  7. THINK CONTRARIAN (Thiel, Graham, Buffett)            ║
║     → If everyone agrees, the opportunity is gone.       ║
║                                                           ║
║  8. OBSESS OVER CUSTOMERS (Bezos, Graham, Chesky)        ║
║     → Not competitors. Not metrics. Customers.           ║
║                                                           ║
║  9. INVERT THE QUESTION (Munger, Buffett)                ║
║     → "How does this fail?" before "How does this win?"  ║
║                                                           ║
║ 10. PLAY THE LONG GAME (Bezos, Naval, Huang)            ║
║     → Short-term thinkers are your competition.          ║
║                                                           ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
decision-engine/
│
├── CLAUDE.md                              # Kernel — loaded into every session
│                                          # Defines identity, principles, behavior
│
├── 00-DECISION-ENGINE.md                  # Master index + playbooks + checklists
├── 01-yc-wisdom.md                        # Knowledge base: YCombinator
├── 02-vc-wisdom.md                        # Knowledge base: VCs & a16z
├── 03-jobs-gates.md                       # Knowledge base: Jobs & Gates
├── 04-naval-buffett-ellison.md            # Knowledge base: Naval, Buffett, Ellison
├── 05-modern-founders.md                  # Knowledge base: Musk, Bezos, Thiel, etc.
│
└── .claude/
    ├── commands/                           # Slash commands (interactive playbooks)
    │   ├── decide.md                      #   /decide — universal router
    │   ├── build.md                       #   /build — idea validation
    │   ├── pivot.md                       #   /pivot — pivot vs. persevere
    │   ├── hire.md                        #   /hire — hiring framework
    │   ├── raise.md                       #   /raise — fundraising strategy
    │   ├── scale.md                       #   /scale — scaling diagnostic
    │   ├── wartime.md                     #   /wartime — leadership mode
    │   ├── weekly.md                      #   /weekly — founder checklist
    │   ├── contrarian.md                  #   /contrarian — stress test
    │   └── premortem.md                   #   /premortem — failure analysis
    │
    ├── agents/                            # Specialized sub-agents
    │   ├── advisor.md                     #   General founder advisor
    │   ├── contrarian.md                  #   Devil's advocate
    │   ├── premortem.md                   #   Inversion analyst
    │   └── investor-lens.md              #   VC perspective evaluator
    │
    └── skills/                            # Lazy-loaded capabilities
        ├── decision-frameworks/
        │   └── SKILL.md                   #   Auto-activates on decision questions
        └── founder-wisdom/
            └── SKILL.md                   #   Auto-activates for specific thinkers

Research was conducted across 50+ web sources including:

• Paul Graham's essays (paulgraham.com)

• Sam Altman's Startup Playbook

• a16z blog and podcast archives

• Jeff Bezos's annual shareholder letters (1997-2021)

• Peter Thiel's CS183 Stanford lectures and Zero to One - Walter Isaacson's biographies of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk

• Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things The Almanack of Naval Ravikant- Reid Hoffman's Blitzscaling - Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook - Warren Buffett's annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders

• Charlie Munger's Poor Charlie's Almanack - Sequoia Capital's Arc PMF framework

• YCombinator's seed fundraising guide

• Farnam Street (fs.blog) interview transcripts

• Masters of Scale podcast transcripts

• Hacker News founder wisdom threads

• D Conference and Lost Interview transcripts

• Create or extend a knowledge base file (01-05) with their frameworks

• Add them to the founder-wisdom

skill in.claude/skills/founder-wisdom/SKILL.md

• Update the source map in 00-DECISION-ENGINE.md

• Create a new .md

file in.claude/commands/

• Use $ARGUMENTS

for user input - Reference the relevant knowledge base files

• Add it to CLAUDE.md

and this README

• Create a new .md

file in.claude/agents/

with YAML frontmatter - Define name

,description

, andallowedTools

• Give it a clear voice, framework set, and response format
• Add it to CLAUDE.md

and this README

This is a personal decision tool. The frameworks, quotes, and mental models referenced herein are attributed to their original creators. This project is a synthesis for personal use and education.

Built with Claude Code agent teams. 4,835+ lines of synthesized founder wisdom. March 2026.