Forced Analogy

by danium

Forced Analogy is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by danium in lateral-thinking.

216 stars14 forkson danium/lateral-thinkingAdded 2026/08/11+88% in starsRepository updated 2026/07/09

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

agent-skillsbrainstormingclaude-codecodexcreativitylateral-thinking

Install in seconds

Install Forced Analogy

Copy Forced Analogy 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/danium/lateral-thinking/tree/main/skills/analogy ~/.claude/skills/analogy

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/danium/lateral-thinking.git

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

In this catalog

Source file: skills/analogy/SKILL.md in danium/lateral-thinking
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/analogy
Collection: One of 9 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Forced Analogy does

A creative problem-solving technique. Strip a problem to its bare structure, map it onto a structurally similar but distant domain (biological, operational, social), and transfer its mechanisms to generate novel solutions. Use when industry playbooks feel exhausted or solutions derivative.

Forced Analogy is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Forced Analogy comes from a repository tagged agent-skills, brainstorming, claude-code, codex and creativity.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Forced Analogy (Structural Transplant)

What this technique does

Take the problem, strip it down to its bare structure — who the actors are, what flows between them, where it jams — and find a system in a distant domain that has the same shape. An immune system, an air-traffic control tower, a restaurant kitchen at dinner rush. Then ask what that system does about the jam that you don't, and carry the mechanism back as a concrete idea. The point is distance: the further the source domain sits from your problem, the more its solutions will look nothing like the ones already on your whiteboard.

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

Frequently asked about Forced Analogy

What else does danium publish alongside Forced Analogy?
Forced Analogy is one of 9 skills that DirSkills catalogs from danium/lateral-thinking, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Assumption Inversion, Concept Fan and Lateral Thinking. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Forced Analogy does, and is maintained by danium in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the danium/lateral-thinking page.
How does Forced Analogy compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Forced Analogy ranks #2219 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 Forced Analogy against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.