First Principles Review

First Principles Review is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by GanyuanRan in Aegis.

1.1K stars50 forkson GanyuanRan/AegisAdded 2026/08/21+2% in starsRepository updated 2026/08/19

agent-skillsai-agentsai-codingarchitecture-driven-developmentawsome-coding-pluginbaseline-firstclaude-codecodexcoding-agentsdivedsh-pluginevidence-drivenfirst-principlesopencodesoftware-architecturespec-driven-developmentspec-kit

Install in seconds

Install First Principles Review

Copy First Principles Review into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/GanyuanRan/Aegis/tree/main/skills/first-principles-review ~/.claude/skills/first-principles-review

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/GanyuanRan/Aegis.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/first-principles-review/SKILL.md in GanyuanRan/Aegis
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/first-principles-review
Collection: One of 22 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What First Principles Review does

First Principles Review helps evaluate ambiguous design, debugging, or architecture choices using first-principles and Occam's-razor reasoning. Use it when competing constraints, fallback growth, or ownership confusion could send work down the wrong path.

First Principles Review is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. First Principles Review comes from a repository tagged agent-skills, ai-agents, ai-coding, architecture-driven-development and awsome-coding-plugin.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

First Principles Review

Purpose

Use this as a lightweight decision review before another Aegis workflow makes a directional choice. It is a compositional skill, not a standalone workflow.

Do not replace brainstorming, systematic-debugging, writing-plans, requesting-code-review, or verification-before-completion. Use it to clean the decision surface those skills will act on.

When this review materially changes the direction, surface Aegis Visibility in natural prose: name the first principle, dropped assumption, smallest sufficient path, or owner / retirement falsifier that changed the decision. Keep it advisory and task-specific; do not turn the lens into approval authority or a generic skill trace.

Use When

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about First Principles Review

What else does GanyuanRan publish alongside First Principles Review?
First Principles Review is one of 22 skills that DirSkills catalogs from GanyuanRan/Aegis, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Aegis Goal Framing, Anti-Entropy Governance and Brainstorming. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way First Principles Review does, and is maintained by GanyuanRan in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the GanyuanRan/Aegis page.
How does First Principles Review compare to other AI Engineering skills?
First Principles Review ranks #1284 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of First Principles Review against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.