Primitives
A primitive is one strategic fact: one decision, one assumption, one risk. Primitives are the atoms that strategy repos are built from.
- DEC-DEC-001decision
Chose Paddle over Stripe for EU VAT handling
Automatic EU VAT. ~60% of target users are in Germany / France.
active2d ago - DEC-PVT-001pivot
Pivot from SMB to mid-market design partners
SMBs churn at 40%/mo. Mid-market shows 4-week activation but higher LTV.
active1w ago - RSK-ASMP-001assumption
Users tolerate magic-link latency up to 500ms
Captured from brainstorm session. Needs validation experiment.
pendingtoday - WHO-PERS-001persona
Solo founder building payments product in EU
Primary persona. Values compliance + speed over customization.
active1w ago - WHAT-VP-001value proposition
Strategy that outlives your codebase
Durable strategic context that coding agents can read and act on.
active3d ago
This is what your primitives look like after you sign in and navigate to your project's repo view.
Core
The basics — who you build for, what you build, why
Operations
How it works — delivery, capability, revenue
Environment
The world around you — market, context, risk
Evolution
Where you're going — evidence, direction, decisions
Each dimension has 3 to 14 subtypes. The full 93-subtype taxonomy lives in src/lib/taxonomy.ts.
Anatomy of a primitive
- Dimension — one of 12 strategic categories (decisions, risks, who, what, and so on).
- Subtype — a narrower shape within the dimension. For example, the decisions dimension has subtypes for
decision,value_principle, andpivot. - ID — format
<DIM>-<SUBTYPE>-<NUM>. The counter is scoped to the project. - Content — the actual strategic fact, in prose or structured JSON.
- Metadata — source (which session or tool produced it), review status, created timestamp, links to related primitives.
Sample IDs
Five examples using real prefixes from the taxonomy:
| ID | Meaning |
|---|---|
DEC-DEC-001 | Decisions dim, decision subtype — a concrete choice. |
DEC-PVT-001 | Decisions dim, pivot subtype — a directional change. |
RSK-ASMP-001 | Risk dim, assumption subtype — something assumed but not validated. |
WHO-PERS-001 | Who dim, persona subtype — a user archetype. |
WHAT-VP-001 | What dim, value_proposition subtype — the core promise to users. |
Where primitives come from
Primitives are produced by sessions (see Session types). A single session might create 5–15 primitives across multiple dimensions. Coding agents can also write primitives during development via the push_primitives MCP tool — see MCP integration.
Where primitives surface
- On disk in the .alienmonster/ directory —
decisions.md,assumptions.md, and other rendered files. - In the web UI — grouped by dimension in the repo browser, by subtype on each dimension detail page.
- In agent responses — coding agents quote primitive IDs inline when they apply a decision or flag a risk.
Primitives and powers
Powers are rendered from primitives. The target-user power pulls from who / what / why-dimension primitives; tech-decisions pulls from capability / decisions; and so on. You don't create powers directly — capture primitives and the relevant powers render on their own.