Add first principles thinking summaries

CLAUDE.md

@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@ When the user mentions a new book title (or uploads a file), do the following:
 2. **Create the book's folder** at `books/<Book-Title-Slug>/` with:
    - `00-book-overview.md` — fill in title, author, your initial context
    - `master-summary.md` — start empty; you will grow this as chapters are processed
-3. **Ask**: "Ready! Please paste or upload Chapter 1 when you'd like to begin."
+3. **Move the original book file** (PDF, EPUB, TXT, or Markdown) into the book's folder when one is provided, preserving the original filename.
+4. **Ask**: "Ready! Please paste or upload Chapter 1 when you'd like to begin."
 
 ---
 
@@ -86,9 +87,9 @@ This file grows into a full-book "story so far" the reader can review at any tim
 | Format | Action |
 |---|---|
 | **Pasted text** | Process directly |
-| **PDF upload** | Extract and process the specified chapter |
-| **EPUB upload** | Extract and process the specified chapter |
-| **Text file (.txt / .md)** | Process directly |
+| **PDF upload** | Move the original file into the book folder, then extract and process the specified chapter |
+| **EPUB upload** | Move the original file into the book folder, then extract and process the specified chapter |
+| **Text file (.txt / .md)** | Move the original file into the book folder, then process directly |
 
 When the user uploads a file, always confirm: "I see you've uploaded `[filename]`. Which chapter should I process?" unless it is obvious.
 

README.md

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Tell your AI agent:
 ```
 new book: Atomic Habits by James Clear
 ```
-The agent will set up a folder under `books/` for you.
+The agent will set up a folder under `books/` for you. If you provide a PDF, EPUB, TXT, or Markdown file, the original file is moved into that book's folder so the source stays with its notes.
 
 ### Step 2 — Share a Chapter
 Paste the chapter text, or upload a PDF/EPUB/text file and tell the agent which chapter to process:
@@ -57,6 +57,7 @@ book-summarizer/
     └── [book-title-slug]/
         ├── 00-book-overview.md
         ├── master-summary.md
+        ├── [original-book-file].pdf
         ├── chapter-01-[slug].md
         ├── chapter-02-[slug].md
         └── ...

books/first-principles-thinking/00-book-overview.md

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+# Book Overview - First Principles Thinking
+**Full title:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions
+**Author:** Walter Dimon
+**Genre:** Non-fiction / Reasoning / Mental Models / Decision-Making
+**Started:** 2026-09-11
+**Status:** In progress
+**Source file:** `books/first-principles-thinking/First Principles Thinking_ Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions.pdf`
+
+---
+
+## What This Book Is About
+
+*First Principles Thinking* is a nonfiction book about reasoning from fundamentals instead of relying only on inherited assumptions, habits, conventions, or surface-level patterns. It presents first principles thinking as a practical mental model for breaking problems down, testing what is actually true, and rebuilding clearer decisions from the ground up.
+
+The book appears to pair philosophical foundations with practical thinking tools, including reduction, root cause analysis, inversion, systems thinking, pattern recognition, and synthesis. Its central concern is not just how to analyze ideas, but how to notice when familiar patterns are hiding better questions.
+
+## Why Read It
+
+This book is for readers who want to think more independently, make better decisions, and understand when to question assumptions rather than simply follow templates. It should be especially useful for building a durable toolkit of mental models for work, learning, personal judgment, and problem-solving.
+
+## Chapters Processed
+
+- [ ] Reader's Preface - From First Principles
+- [x] Chapter 1 - What Patterns Hide
+- [x] Chapter 2 - What First Principles Actually Means
+- [x] Chapter 3 - The Philosophers Who Developed the Method
+- [x] Chapter 4 - Learning Without Permission
+- [x] Chapter 5 - The Self-Taught Mind
+- [x] Chapter 6 - Curiosity as Discipline
+- [ ] Chapter 7 - Breaking Problems Apart
+- [ ] Chapter 8 - Root Cause Analysis
+- [ ] Chapter 9 - Building From Bedrock
+- [ ] Chapter 10 - Your Cognitive Distortions
+- [ ] Chapter 11 - Mimetic Desire and What You Actually Want
+- [ ] Chapter 12 - Inversion: Thinking Backward to See Forward
+- [ ] Chapter 13 - Systems Thinking: When Wholes Exceed Parts
+- [ ] Chapter 14 - Pattern Recognition and Generation
+- [ ] Chapter 15 - Portraits of Mastery
+- [ ] Chapter 16 - The Complete Thinker
+- [ ] Glossary of Mental Models
+
+## Reader's Goals
+
+*What do you hope to get from this book? Add your own goals here as you read.*

books/first-principles-thinking/chapter-01-what-patterns-hide.md

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+# Chapter 1 - What Patterns Hide
+**Book:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions by Walter Dimon
+**Date processed:** 2026-09-11
+
+---
+
+## 📖 Chapter Summary
+
+Chapter 1 opens with Trafton Drew's radiology experiment, where trained specialists searching CT scans for lung nodules missed a plainly visible gorilla because their attention had been tuned to a different pattern. Dimon uses this as the chapter's central image: patterns are not defects in thinking. They make expertise, speed, and efficiency possible. A surgeon's scrub routine, a basketball player's free-throw ritual, and an emergency physician's practiced response all show how patterns conserve attention for the moments that matter.
+
+The danger is that successful patterns become invisible. They continue running after the context that made them useful has changed. A childhood habit of deference can follow someone into adult relationships; a family belief about security can quietly govern career choices decades later. The chapter then extends the point to cultural inheritance through Chesterton's fence. Inherited rules, procedures, remedies, and institutions may encode real solutions, even when no one remembers the original problem. But longevity alone does not prove value; some structures persist through inertia, as with the QWERTY keyboard.
+
+The chapter closes by naming three modes of operating. Pattern-following is appropriate when a familiar problem requires fast, competent execution. Pattern-questioning begins when the expected result does not arrive and assumptions need examination. First principles thinking is the most radical mode: it asks what the problem actually requires once inherited methods and conventions are stripped away. The real intelligence is not using one mode everywhere, but learning when to trust experience, when to question it, and when to rebuild from the ground up.
+
+---
+
+## 🔑 Key Points
+
+- Patterns focus attention by making familiar decisions in advance, which allows people to act quickly under pressure.
+- The same patterns that create expertise can also create blindness when reality falls outside the expected frame.
+- Many personal assumptions feel like reality because they were absorbed early and have operated beneath awareness for years.
+- Chesterton's fence warns that inherited practices should be understood before they are removed.
+- Long-lasting traditions may contain hidden practical wisdom, but some survive only through inertia or convenience.
+- Pattern-following is best for familiar, high-speed situations where proven responses work.
+- Pattern-questioning is needed when reality stops behaving according to the frame you placed around it.
+- First principles thinking is reserved for problems whose inherited foundations appear unsound.
+- Clearer thinking begins with matching the mode of thought to the situation rather than applying one favorite tool everywhere.
+
+---
+
+## 💬 Memorable Quotes
+
+> "Everything else waits in plain sight." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 1*
+
+> "The field is full of fences." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 1*
+
+---
+
+## 🔗 Connections to Previous Chapters
+
+This is Chapter 1, so it opens the book's main questions: when should we trust inherited patterns, when should we question them, and when should we rebuild from first principles? It also introduces the book's recurring metaphor of load-bearing structures: some assumptions support the whole system, while others are merely partitions that can be moved or removed.
+
+---
+
+## ❓ Review Questions
+
+1. What did the radiology gorilla experiment reveal about trained attention?
+2. Why are patterns useful rather than simply dangerous?
+3. What is the lesson of Chesterton's fence?
+4. How can a pattern that once solved a real problem become harmful later?
+5. How would you decide whether a current problem calls for pattern-following, pattern-questioning, or first principles thinking?
+
+---
+
+## 🃏 Flashcards
+
+```
+Q: What is pattern-following?
+A: Acting from a familiar, practiced response when a problem fits a known shape.
+
+Q: What is pattern-questioning?
+A: Slowing down to examine assumptions when a familiar approach stops working.
+
+Q: What is first principles thinking?
+A: Rebuilding from the foundational constraints of a problem rather than inherited methods.
+
+Q: What does Chesterton's fence teach?
+A: Understand why a structure exists before deciding to remove it.
+
+Q: Why can expertise create blindness?
+A: Expert patterns tune attention toward expected signals and can filter out unexpected ones.
+
+Q: What is the danger of inherited assumptions?
+A: They may keep solving an old problem after the context has changed.
+
+Q: What is the chapter's core skill?
+A: Knowing which mode of thinking the moment requires.
+```

books/first-principles-thinking/chapter-02-what-first-principles-actually-means.md

@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+# Chapter 2 - What First Principles Actually Means
+**Book:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions by Walter Dimon
+**Date processed:** 2026-09-11
+
+---
+
+## 📖 Chapter Summary
+
+Chapter 2 defines a first principle as the load-bearing element beneath a system of thought. Dimon begins with Euclid's fifth axiom, which mathematicians tried and failed to derive from the others for centuries. The failure mattered because it showed that the axiom was not decorative; it was structurally independent. A first principle is like a load-bearing wall in an old house: remove it and the structure changes or collapses.
+
+The chapter distinguishes universal first principles from domain first principles. Universal principles include logic and physical laws; they apply regardless of context. Domain principles govern success in a particular field, such as profitability in business or trust in relationships. Practical first principles thinking therefore involves reduction and reconstruction: strip a problem down to what cannot be removed, then rebuild a solution from those essentials rather than from convention.
+
+Dimon shows the method working brilliantly in bounded problems with physical or economic constraints. Malcolm McLean transformed shipping by asking whether cargo had to be handled piece by piece; the shipping container removed enormous friction from global trade. James Dyson transformed vacuum cleaners by asking whether bags were necessary at all; cyclonic separation attacked the real job of separating dirt from air. But the chapter also shows where reduction struggles: Robert McNamara's Vietnam metrics mistook measurable proxies for true foundations, while expert intuition, relationships, culture, art, traffic, ecosystems, and markets often depend on tacit or emergent dynamics that cannot be understood by disassembly alone.
+
+The final lesson is discernment. First principles thinking is powerful when the problem is legible, bounded, testable, and governed by stable constraints. It can be wasteful or harmful under time pressure, in mature domains where expert pattern recognition works, or in human systems where meaning and interaction matter more than isolated parts. The complete thinker learns to ask not only "What are the foundations?" but also "Is this the kind of problem that yields to reduction?"
+
+---
+
+## 🔑 Key Points
+
+- A first principle is a foundational proposition or constraint that cannot be derived from something more basic within the system.
+- The load-bearing wall metaphor separates essential foundations from conventions that merely feel fixed.
+- Practical first principles thinking is contextual because different domains have different foundations.
+- Universal first principles apply broadly, while domain first principles govern success within specific fields.
+- The method has two movements: reduction to essentials and reconstruction from those essentials.
+- McLean's shipping container succeeded because it attacked the foundational friction in moving cargo.
+- Dyson's bagless vacuum succeeded because it questioned whether the accepted mechanism was necessary.
+- McNamara's Vietnam analysis failed because it measured visible proxies rather than the conflict's human foundations.
+- Tacit expertise and emergent systems often resist clean decomposition.
+- The highest skill is knowing when first principles thinking clarifies and when it distorts.
+
+---
+
+## 💬 Memorable Quotes
+
+> "A first principle is a load-bearing wall." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 2*
+
+> "The method requires both movements together." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 2*
+
+---
+
+## 🔗 Connections to Previous Chapters
+
+Chapter 1 introduced first principles thinking as the third mode beyond pattern-following and pattern-questioning. Chapter 2 gives that mode a precise definition and adds boundaries around it. The warning about McNamara also deepens Chapter 1's theme that the wrong thinking mode can make intelligence dangerous: rigorous analysis still fails if it is aimed at the wrong foundations.
+
+---
+
+## ❓ Review Questions
+
+1. Why does Dimon compare a first principle to a load-bearing wall?
+2. What is the difference between universal and domain first principles?
+3. How do reduction and reconstruction work together?
+4. Why were McLean and Dyson good examples of first principles thinking?
+5. Why can first principles thinking distort human, relational, or emergent systems?
+
+---
+
+## 🃏 Flashcards
+
+```
+Q: What is a first principle?
+A: A foundational constraint or proposition that supports a system and cannot be reduced further within it.
+
+Q: What is reduction?
+A: Stripping a problem down to the elements that cannot be removed without breaking it.
+
+Q: What is reconstruction?
+A: Building a solution back up from the essential elements discovered through reduction.
+
+Q: What makes a problem suited to first principles thinking?
+A: Clear boundaries, stable constraints, testable parts, and legible cause-and-effect structure.
+
+Q: What did Malcolm McLean question?
+A: Whether cargo needed to be handled as individual pieces during shipping.
+
+Q: What did James Dyson question?
+A: Whether vacuum cleaners needed bags to separate dirt from air.
+
+Q: What was McNamara's error in Vietnam?
+A: He mistook measurable indicators for the true human and political foundations of the conflict.
+
+Q: What is the chapter's central caution?
+A: Reduction clarifies some problems and distorts others.
+```

books/first-principles-thinking/chapter-03-the-philosophers-who-developed-the-method.md

@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+# Chapter 3 - The Philosophers Who Developed the Method
+**Book:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions by Walter Dimon
+**Date processed:** 2026-09-11
+
+---
+
+## 📖 Chapter Summary
+
+Chapter 3 traces first principles thinking through a philosophical and scientific lineage. Aristotle begins the story with his four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. By asking what something is made of, what gives it form, what brought it into being, and what it is for, Aristotle turned explanation into a disciplined search for foundations. His specific physics would later be revised, but his method of complete inquiry endured.
+
+Descartes contributes radical doubt. Sitting alone in a stove-heated room, he stripped away every belief that could be questioned until he reached the certainty of thinking itself. His method models the reconstructive movement of first principles thinking: clear unstable ground, identify what cannot be removed, and rebuild from there. Galileo adds disciplined observation and experiment. By simplifying motion with inclined planes and using the telescope to test inherited cosmology, he showed that tradition must answer to what the world reveals.
+
+Newton then synthesizes the scattered discoveries of predecessors into a single system. His laws of motion and universal gravitation joined earthly and celestial motion under one framework. Dimon emphasizes that Newton did not start from nothing; he inherited Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and ancient mathematics, then corrected and extended what held. Later sections show the method spreading into politics, economics, and computation through Locke, Jefferson, Smith, and Turing.
+
+The chapter's deeper point is that first principles thinking is itself an inheritance. It does not require contempt for tradition. It requires understanding a tradition deeply enough to test it, preserve what is sound, and revise what evidence no longer supports. Courage asks difficult questions; humility keeps conclusions open to later correction.
+
+---
+
+## 🔑 Key Points
+
+- Aristotle's four causes offer a portable framework for complete explanation.
+- A method can remain valuable even when some of its historical conclusions are later corrected.
+- Descartes used radical doubt to remove unstable beliefs and search for a foundation that could not be doubted.
+- Galileo tested inherited claims through controlled observation rather than authority.
+- Newton synthesized earlier insights into a unified mathematical framework for motion and gravity.
+- First principles thinking does not mean starting from nothing; it means knowing what in the inheritance can bear weight.
+- Locke and Jefferson applied foundational reasoning to political legitimacy and rights.
+- Smith applied foundational reasoning to productivity, specialization, exchange, and wealth.
+- Turing reduced computation to symbol manipulation according to rules.
+- The tradition requires both courage to challenge assumptions and humility to revise conclusions.
+
+---
+
+## 💬 Memorable Quotes
+
+> "Some generations inherit answers." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 3*
+
+> "Tradition was material to work with." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 3*
+
+---
+
+## 🔗 Connections to Previous Chapters
+
+Chapter 1 warned that inherited patterns can both help and blind us, while Chapter 2 defined first principles as load-bearing foundations. Chapter 3 shows that the method has always involved a disciplined relationship with inheritance. Aristotle, Descartes, Galileo, and Newton each worked from earlier traditions, but they refused to let inherited authority outrank foundations, evidence, and coherent reconstruction.
+
+---
+
+## ❓ Review Questions
+
+1. What are Aristotle's four causes?
+2. How does Descartes' method of doubt resemble first principles thinking?
+3. Why was Galileo's use of simplification and experiment so important?
+4. What did Newton synthesize that earlier thinkers had left fragmented?
+5. How can someone respect tradition while still thinking from first principles?
+
+---
+
+## 🃏 Flashcards
+
+```
+Q: What are Aristotle's four causes?
+A: Material, formal, efficient, and final causes.
+
+Q: What does material cause explain?
+A: What something is made of and what constraints its material creates.
+
+Q: What does final cause explain?
+A: The purpose or end toward which something is directed.
+
+Q: What is Descartes' contribution to first principles thinking?
+A: Radical doubt as a way to clear unstable beliefs and find firmer ground.
+
+Q: What is Galileo's contribution?
+A: Testing tradition through simplified observation and experiment.
+
+Q: What is Newton's contribution?
+A: Synthesizing separate principles into a unified explanatory system.
+
+Q: What does the chapter say about tradition?
+A: Tradition should be tested, preserved where sound, and revised where evidence requires.
+
+Q: Why is humility important in first principles thinking?
+A: Today's bedrock may become tomorrow's platform for deeper explanation.
+```

books/first-principles-thinking/chapter-04-learning-without-permission.md

@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+# Chapter 4 - Learning Without Permission
+**Book:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions by Walter Dimon
+**Date processed:** 2026-09-11
+
+---
+
+## 📖 Chapter Summary
+
+Chapter 4 shifts from historical foundations to the autodidact's path. Dimon begins with Michael Faraday, the bookbinder's apprentice who read the scientific books he was supposed to bind, attended public lectures, repeated experiments, and eventually became one of the great experimental scientists. Faraday's story illustrates the chapter's central claim: many boundaries around knowledge are psychological inheritances, not actual locks.
+
+The chapter explains how older educational boundaries once had practical reasons. Books, equipment, expert time, and institutions were scarce, so prerequisites and credentials helped organize access. But the material conditions have changed. Online courses, public lectures, expert writing, digital communities, and conversational AI have made explanation and practice more accessible than ever. The old scarcity has weakened, but many people still carry the habit of waiting for someone to certify that they are ready.
+
+Dimon then places Faraday inside a broader autodidact tradition that includes Mary Somerville, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Benjamin Franklin. These learners did not reject expertise; they sought it fiercely and used whatever channels were available. The chapter also connects modern self-directed learning to ancient apprenticeship: videos, open-source repositories, forums, and interactive models can recreate parts of the workshop atmosphere where learners observe, attempt, receive feedback, and participate.
+
+The final section warns against the autodidact's trap. Genuine independent learning is not the same as skimming information and declaring the experts wrong. Douglass, Ramanujan, and Franklin submitted their work to pressure, criticism, and refinement. The counterfeit version begins with a conclusion, seeks confirmation, and treats expert disagreement as proof of conspiracy or blindness. Real self-directed learning requires honest self-assessment, discernment, connection to critics and communities, and patience.
+
+---
+
+## 🔑 Key Points
+
+- Many people wait for permission to learn because schooling and credential cultures trained them to do so.
+- Faraday's life shows that deep learning can begin outside formal institutions when curiosity becomes disciplined action.
+- Historical educational boundaries often arose from real scarcity, but many of those constraints have weakened.
+- Modern tools make self-directed learning more accessible, interactive, and practice-rich than in earlier eras.
+- The autodidact tradition includes learners who claimed the right to study while still respecting real expertise.
+- Digital communities can function like distributed apprenticeships when they provide feedback and shared standards.
+- Teaching or answering questions tests whether your understanding can survive reconstruction.
+- The counterfeit autodidact adopts the posture of independent thought without the discipline that makes it reliable.
+- Good self-directed learners ask what would change their mind and seek the strongest opposing views.
+- Freedom in learning must be paired with self-assessment, discernment, connection, and patience.
+
+---
+
+## 💬 Memorable Quotes
+
+> "The door was unlocked the entire time." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 4*
+
+> "Learning without permission is an act of independence." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 4*
+
+---
+
+## 🔗 Connections to Previous Chapters
+
+Chapter 3 showed that major thinkers often learned beyond the boundaries of sanctioned curricula. Chapter 4 makes that implicit pattern explicit. It also extends Chapter 1's concern with inherited patterns: the assumption that knowledge requires permission may itself be an invisible pattern that has outlived many of the conditions that created it.
+
+---
+
+## ❓ Review Questions
+
+1. What does Faraday's story reveal about access to knowledge?
+2. Why did educational boundaries and prerequisites originally make practical sense?
+3. How have modern tools changed the landscape for autodidacts?
+4. What separates genuine self-directed learning from its counterfeit?
+5. How can an autodidact use experts and communities without surrendering independence?
+
+---
+
+## 🃏 Flashcards
+
+```
+Q: What is an autodidact?
+A: A self-directed learner who takes responsibility for their own education.
+
+Q: What assumption does the autodidact question first?
+A: The assumption that learning requires permission.
+
+Q: Why are modern learning tools powerful?
+A: They provide access, explanation, practice, and feedback outside traditional institutions.
+
+Q: What is the autodidact's trap?
+A: Mistaking confirmation-seeking and anti-expert posture for genuine independent thinking.
+
+Q: What does honest self-assessment require?
+A: Noticing the difference between real understanding and confidence that has risen too quickly.
+
+Q: What question protects inquiry from becoming dogma?
+A: What would change my mind?
+
+Q: Why does connection matter for self-directed learners?
+A: Other people expose blind spots and test whether your ideas hold up.
+
+Q: Why is patience essential?
+A: Self-directed learning is nonlinear and needs repeated contact before understanding coheres.
+```

books/first-principles-thinking/chapter-05-the-self-taught-mind.md

@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+# Chapter 5 - The Self-Taught Mind
+**Book:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions by Walter Dimon
+**Date processed:** 2026-09-11
+
+---
+
+## 📖 Chapter Summary
+
+Chapter 5 asks how self-directed learning becomes usable understanding rather than a pile of fragments. Dimon begins with Richard Feynman's "Things I Don't Know" notebook and his test for understanding: if he could not explain an idea plainly, he did not yet own it. The Feynman Technique mirrors first principles thinking because it strips an idea down to essentials and rebuilds it in simple language, exposing gaps that jargon can hide.
+
+The chapter contrasts institutionally organized knowledge with autodidactic knowledge. Universities divide fields into departments, which supports depth but can weaken cross-domain connections. Self-directed learners can move more freely, but they face a different risk: diffusion. Reading widely, highlighting constantly, and sampling podcasts or articles can create the feeling of progress without producing structured comprehension. Facts are raw material; frameworks turn them into capability.
+
+Dimon then develops the idea of mental models and deliberate cross-domain connection. Feedback loops, equilibrium, leverage, adaptation, network effects, and similar structures recur across fields. Maxwell's use of fluid dynamics to unify electromagnetism, Leonardo's application of hydraulics to anatomy, and adaptive cancer therapy's borrowing from ecology all show how real insight can come from recognizing a shared structure beneath different surfaces. The self-taught mind becomes powerful when it builds a lattice of connected models.
+
+The chapter's second half explains how to support that lattice outside memory. Niklas Luhmann's slip box, Faraday's research diaries, Woolf's commonplace books, Franklin's Junto, and modern linked-note systems all externalize cognition. Notes, links, revisiting, and participation in knowledge networks help ideas accumulate, collide, and become available for synthesis. The practical call is to build a rhythm: capture ideas in your own words, connect them to older ideas, revisit and revise them, and participate in communities that sharpen your thinking.
+
+---
+
+## 🔑 Key Points
+
+- Feynman's plain-language test reveals whether you truly understand an idea or only recognize its vocabulary.
+- Self-directed learning becomes powerful when fragments are organized into frameworks.
+- Formal education builds efficient domain expertise, but it can also make disciplinary boundaries feel natural.
+- Autodidacts can build cross-domain intelligence by asking what each new idea connects to.
+- Mental models are portable frameworks that reveal recurring structures beneath different contexts.
+- Strong analogies transfer deep structure, while weak analogies rely only on surface similarity.
+- A personal knowledge system externalizes memory and makes connections easier to preserve.
+- Luhmann's slip box demonstrates how linked notes can become a long-term thinking partner.
+- Networks of knowledge test private reasoning against other minds and improve the search for foundations.
+- A sustainable practice depends on regular capture, linking, revisiting, and contribution.
+
+---
+
+## 💬 Memorable Quotes
+
+> "Fragments become frameworks." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 5*
+
+> "The value is not in volume but in structure." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 5*
+
+---
+
+## 🔗 Connections to Previous Chapters
+
+Chapter 4 argued that self-directed learning requires freedom plus discipline. Chapter 5 supplies the internal and external scaffolding for that discipline. It also extends Chapter 2's reduction-and-reconstruction model: understanding an idea requires reducing it to its essential structure, then reconstructing it clearly enough that it can travel across domains and survive explanation.
+
+---
+
+## ❓ Review Questions
+
+1. What did Feynman's "Things I Don't Know" notebook help him do?
+2. Why can broad self-directed learning become fragmented?
+3. What makes a mental model different from an isolated fact?
+4. How does a linked note system support first principles thinking?
+5. How can participating in a knowledge network improve private reasoning?
+
+---
+
+## 🃏 Flashcards
+
+```
+Q: What is the Feynman Technique?
+A: Explaining an idea in plain language to reveal gaps and rebuild understanding from foundations.
+
+Q: What is a mental model?
+A: A portable framework for understanding how something works.
+
+Q: What is a knowledge lattice?
+A: A network of connected models whose relationships reinforce understanding.
+
+Q: What is externalized cognition?
+A: Using notes, diagrams, logs, or systems outside memory to store and develop thought.
+
+Q: What made Luhmann's slip box powerful?
+A: It linked individual ideas into a growing network that supported synthesis.
+
+Q: Why is writing useful for learning?
+A: It forces vague impressions into precise language and exposes missing steps.
+
+Q: What is deliberate transfer?
+A: Looking for the same underlying structure in different domains.
+
+Q: What turns information into insight?
+A: Structure, connection, application, and revision.
+```

books/first-principles-thinking/chapter-06-curiosity-as-discipline.md

@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+# Chapter 6 - Curiosity as Discipline
+**Book:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions by Walter Dimon
+**Date processed:** 2026-09-11
+
+---
+
+## 📖 Chapter Summary
+
+Chapter 6 distinguishes passing interest from disciplined curiosity. Dimon begins with Barbara McClintock, who studied maize chromosomes for six decades and saw "jumping genes" long before the field accepted them. Her example shows that first principles thinking requires staying with a question long enough for its foundations to appear. Interest is sparked by novelty; curiosity persists through confusion, resistance, and slow progress.
+
+The chapter describes deep curiosity through examples of Feynman cracking safes and Japanese carpenters mastering the kanna. In both cases, early success creates the illusion of understanding, but real mastery begins when simple approaches stop working. Confusion is not proof that the subject is beyond you. It is often the point where surface familiarity gives way to structure. The learner who remains through that discomfort eventually develops sharper questions and more transferable understanding.
+
+Dimon then turns curiosity into practice. The disciplined learner refuses to stop at the first plausible answer, keeps asking why or how, writes explanations to expose gaps, teaches to test clarity, and builds things so reality can push back. The best learning happens in a zone of productive difficulty: not so easy that it merely confirms what you already know, and not so hard that it becomes noise.
+
+The chapter also argues that constraints deepen inquiry. Faraday's limited mathematical training forced him to visualize fields, which became one of his great strengths. A single lens, a fixed form, a daily hour, or a chosen organism can focus attention enough for underlying structure to become visible. The final example, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, shows the long commitment required for foundational insight. His decades of microscopy and drawings helped establish the neuron doctrine. First principles do not appear at the beginning; they become visible through sustained attention.
+
+---
+
+## 🔑 Key Points
+
+- Interest is temporary, while disciplined curiosity returns to the question after novelty fades.
+- McClintock's maize research shows that sustained attention can reveal what prevailing models hide.
+- Early progress often creates the illusion of mastery before real difficulty begins.
+- Confusion can mark entry into the deeper territory where understanding becomes possible.
+- Deep inquiry requires pressing beyond the first plausible answer.
+- Writing and teaching expose gaps that private thinking can hide.
+- Building things tests understanding against reality instead of leaving it abstract.
+- Productive difficulty is the zone where learning is challenging but still reachable.
+- Constraints can focus curiosity by limiting drift and forcing attention toward essentials.
+- Long-term inquiry depends on structure, records, community, and identity as much as initial fascination.
+
+---
+
+## 💬 Memorable Quotes
+
+> "Interest visits." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 6*
+
+> "The constraint was a lens." - *Walter Dimon, Chapter 6*
+
+---
+
+## 🔗 Connections to Previous Chapters
+
+Chapter 5 explained how to organize knowledge so it can accumulate. Chapter 6 explains what sustains that accumulation over years: curiosity disciplined by practice, constraint, and commitment. It also loops back to Chapter 1's theme of noticing what patterns hide, because McClintock and Cajal both saw past dominant models by staying close to the evidence longer than others did.
+
+---
+
+## ❓ Review Questions
+
+1. How does Dimon distinguish interest from curiosity?
+2. Why is Barbara McClintock an important example of disciplined curiosity?
+3. What role does confusion play in deep learning?
+4. How can constraints improve rather than limit inquiry?
+5. What practices help curiosity survive over a long period?
+
+---
+
+## 🃏 Flashcards
+
+```
+Q: What is disciplined curiosity?
+A: The sustained practice of returning to a question through difficulty until its structure becomes clear.
+
+Q: What did Barbara McClintock discover?
+A: Transposable elements, or "jumping genes," in maize chromosomes.
+
+Q: Why is early success risky?
+A: It can create the illusion of mastery before deeper structure has been understood.
+
+Q: What is productive difficulty?
+A: Material challenging enough to stretch understanding but not so hard that it becomes noise.
+
+Q: How does writing support curiosity?
+A: It forces precise explanation and reveals gaps in understanding.
+
+Q: Why can constraints help inquiry?
+A: They concentrate attention and prevent curiosity from scattering.
+
+Q: What did Faraday's limitation encourage?
+A: Visual thinking about fields and lines of force.
+
+Q: What does Cajal's example teach?
+A: Foundational insight often requires years of patient observation and accumulated evidence.
+```

books/first-principles-thinking/master-summary.md

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+# Master Summary - First Principles Thinking
+**Full title:** First Principles Thinking: Mental Models for Thinking Clearly and Making Better Decisions
+**Author:** Walter Dimon
+**Started:** 2026-09-11
+**Chapters processed:** 6
+
+---
+
+## Book Overview
+
+*First Principles Thinking* explores how to reason more clearly by stripping problems down to their foundations, questioning inherited assumptions, and rebuilding conclusions with greater independence and precision. The book introduces first principles thinking as one important mental model within a broader toolkit that also includes root cause analysis, inversion, systems thinking, pattern recognition, and synthesis.
+
+---
+
+## Running Chapter Log
+
+*Entries will be added here as each chapter is processed. This section becomes the book's "story so far."*
+
+<!-- Agent: append new chapter entries below this line -->
+
+## Chapter 1 - What Patterns Hide
+**One-sentence gist:** Patterns make expertise efficient, but they can also hide reality when the context changes.
+**Adds to the book's argument by:** Introducing the three thinking modes--pattern-following, pattern-questioning, and first principles thinking--and framing clear thought as the ability to choose the right mode.
+
+## Chapter 2 - What First Principles Actually Means
+**One-sentence gist:** A first principle is the load-bearing foundation of a system, and the method works by reducing to essentials and reconstructing from them.
+**Adds to the book's argument by:** Defining first principles thinking precisely while warning that it works best for bounded, legible problems and can distort tacit, relational, or emergent systems.
+
+## Chapter 3 - The Philosophers Who Developed the Method
+**One-sentence gist:** First principles thinking descends from a long tradition of inquiry shaped by Aristotle, Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and later foundational thinkers.
+**Adds to the book's argument by:** Showing that the method is not anti-tradition; it is a disciplined way to test inheritance, preserve what holds, and revise what evidence overturns.
+
+## Chapter 4 - Learning Without Permission
+**One-sentence gist:** Self-directed learning begins when people stop waiting for authorization and take responsibility for pursuing knowledge directly.
+**Adds to the book's argument by:** Connecting first principles thinking to autodidactic learning, while distinguishing disciplined inquiry from the counterfeit independence of confirmation-seeking.
+
+## Chapter 5 - The Self-Taught Mind
+**One-sentence gist:** The self-taught mind becomes powerful when fragments of information are organized into frameworks, mental models, notes, and knowledge networks.
+**Adds to the book's argument by:** Providing the scaffolding that turns self-directed learning into usable understanding through explanation, cross-domain connection, externalized cognition, and community.
+
+## Chapter 6 - Curiosity as Discipline
+**One-sentence gist:** Deep curiosity is sustained attention to a question after novelty fades, confusion arrives, and the real work begins.
+**Adds to the book's argument by:** Explaining the temperament and practices that keep inquiry alive long enough for foundations to become visible.
+
+---
+
+## Recurring Themes
+
+- Clear thinking depends on matching the method to the nature of the problem.
+- Inherited structures can preserve real wisdom, but they must be understood and tested.
+- First principles thinking requires both reduction to essentials and reconstruction into something useful.
+- Self-directed learning works best when freedom is paired with discipline, feedback, and patience.
+- Durable understanding comes from structure: mental models, linked notes, communities, and repeated practice.
+- Foundations usually become visible only after sustained attention, not at the beginning of inquiry.
+
+---
+
+## Reader's Notes
+
+*Use this space for reactions, questions, and insights while reading.*

prompts/start-new-book.md

@@ -13,9 +13,10 @@ I'm starting this book and want to process it chapter by chapter as I read.
 Please:
 1. Confirm the book details (title, author, subject/genre)
 2. Set up the book folder at books/[slug]/
-3. Create 00-book-overview.md with what you know about this book
-4. Create an empty master-summary.md ready to be filled
-5. Tell me you're ready for Chapter 1
+3. Move the original uploaded/source file into the book folder, preserving the original filename
+4. Create 00-book-overview.md with what you know about this book
+5. Create an empty master-summary.md ready to be filled
+6. Tell me you're ready for Chapter 1
 
 Book file (if I'm uploading): [attach PDF / EPUB / TXT]
 ```