Strategic Situation Analyzer

Classify any strategic situation and route to the right game-theory skill. Use this skill whenever a user describes any situation involving multiple decision-makers whose outcomes depend on each other's choices. Triggers include: user says 'I'm not sure how to think about this strategically'; user faces a competitive or cooperative decision and doesn't know where to start; user asks which game theory concept applies to their situation; user describes a negotiation, competition, auction, vote, or incentive design problem and wants to know the right framework; user asks 'is this a prisoners' dilemma?'; user wants to understand whether their situation calls for cooperation or competition; user has a business, political, or personal strategic dilemma and needs a diagnostic before diving into analysis; user says 'what kind of game am I playing?'; user describes any interaction where their best action depends on what others will do; user is unsure whether to look for dominant strategies, equilibria, or use backward reasoning; user needs to decide whether to move first or second; user wonders whether they should cooperate, compete, randomize, commit, signal, or negotiate. This is the ENTRY POINT skill for the entire Art of Strategy skill set. It diagnoses the game type and routes to the specialized skill best suited to the situation. It does NOT replace the specialized skills — it prepares the user to use them effectively.

Install

Claude CodeClawhHubnpxCursorCodexGemini CLI

1. Add marketplace

› /plugin marketplace add bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills

2. Install plugin

› /plugin install the-art-of-strategy@bookforge-skills

3. Use the skill

› /strategic-situation-analyzer

CC-BY-SA · Open sourceGitHub

Source Book

The Art of Strategy

Avinash K. Dixit & Barry J. Nalebuff

More from The Art of Strategy

Game Theoryfull

Auction Bidding Strategist

Apply the complete game-theoretic auction framework to determine the optimal bid in any auction format. Use this skill when a user is preparing to bid in an English (ascending) auction, a Japanese auction, a Vickrey (second-price sealed-bid) auction, a Dutch (descending-clock) auction, or a standard sealed-bid first-price auction, and wants the game-theoretically correct strategy rather than guesswork. Triggers include: user is deciding how much to bid in a competitive tender, procurement auction, real estate auction, eBay auction, spectrum license auction, or corporate acquisition; user is worried about overbidding and wants to know how to set a ceiling; user suspects they may be falling into the winner's curse — winning but regretting the price paid; user must classify whether the auction involves private values (each bidder's value is independent) or common values (the item has a single underlying value that all bidders are estimating), because the correct strategy differs sharply between the two; user is evaluating whether to participate in a dollar auction, bidding war, or war-of-attrition-style competitive spending contest and wants to know when to stop or avoid; user needs to shade a bid below their true value in a sealed-bid first-price format and wants the formula; user is designing an auction and wants to know which format will yield more seller revenue; user is bidding in multiple simultaneous auctions and needs to think across the games. This skill does NOT cover multi-round negotiation without a defined auction structure (use a negotiation skill instead), combinatorial auctions with complex package bids, or procurement auctions requiring cost estimation.

Game Theoryfull

Backward Reasoning Game Solver

Solve sequential-move strategic games using backward induction. Use this skill when a user faces a multi-stage decision or negotiation where players alternate moves and each person's best action depends on what others will do later. Triggers include: user needs to determine the optimal opening move in a turn-based game or negotiation; user wants to know whether they can guarantee a win or favorable outcome before the game starts; user must sequence two risky actions and does not know which to attempt first; user is analyzing a multi-stage political, business, or competitive scenario where one party moves, the other responds, and so on; user has a finite-horizon sequential game with known player preferences and needs the game-theoretic solution; user suspects their opponent can anticipate their moves and wants to reason from end-states backward to their first action; user is building a game tree and needs to prune it to find dominant paths; user has a combinatorial takeaway game (like Nim variants) and wants the winning-position formula; user needs to understand why more flexibility or options can paradoxically hurt a player in a sequential game. This skill handles perfect-information, finite, sequential-move games. It does NOT cover simultaneous-move games (use a separate Nash equilibrium skill), incomplete-information games, or infinite-horizon repeated games.

Game Theoryfull

Incentive Scheme Designer

Design and diagnose incentive contracts for situations where effort is unobservable (moral hazard). Use this skill when a user needs to motivate a contractor, employee, co-founder, or agent whose actions cannot be directly monitored; when a user is deciding between a fixed salary, piece-rate, equity share, bonus, or fine structure; when a user needs to set the bonus level so that high-quality effort is in the agent's self-interest; when a user must satisfy both the participation constraint (agent accepts the deal) and the incentive compatibility constraint (agent exerts the desired effort); when a user wants to diagnose why an existing incentive scheme is failing — through sandbagging, gaming, effort diversion, or lack of effort; when a user is deciding between carrots and sticks and needs to understand when each is preferred; when a user suspects financial incentives are crowding out intrinsic motivation (Gneezy/Rustichini effect); when a user manages people performing multiple tasks and needs to know whether to bundle or separate them based on complementarity vs. substitutability; when a user needs to understand efficiency wages and when above-market pay is the cheapest way to deter shirking. This skill covers the full principal-agent problem after a contract is signed. It does NOT cover pre-contract adverse selection (who to hire) — use the information-asymmetry-strategist skill for that.

Game Theoryfull

Information Asymmetry Strategist

Diagnose and resolve information asymmetry in strategic interactions using four mechanisms: signaling, screening, signal jamming, and countersignaling. Use this skill when a user needs to credibly communicate private information to an uninformed counterpart; when a user needs to elicit honest information from a better-informed counterpart without being able to verify their claims; when a user suspects they are on the receiving end of signal jamming or adverse selection and wants to see through it; when a user is designing a pricing scheme, contract structure, hiring process, or product menu and needs to induce self-selection among different customer or candidate types; when a user wants to know whether to signal their quality, countersignal by staying silent, or jam an opponent's signals; when a user needs to apply Bayes' rule to update beliefs after observing an opponent's action in a mixed-strategy game; when a user faces Akerlof-style market collapse risk and wants to identify signaling or screening remedies; when a user is designing a menu of options (e.g., airline fare classes, insurance deductibles, product tiers) and needs to check participation constraints and incentive compatibility constraints. This skill handles both directions of information asymmetry: the informed party communicating outward (signaling, countersignaling, jamming) and the uninformed party extracting information inward (screening, adverse selection management). It does NOT cover moral hazard or principal-agent problems after a contract is signed, nor does it handle simultaneous-move games without information asymmetry (use the Nash equilibrium skill for those).