hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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foresight Foresight produces bounded forecasts with explicit uncertainty to guide decisions. It is NOT: - Preflight checks: Ver…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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2

prestidigitation Prestidigitation transforms. It does not fix, build, scaffold, migrate, or actuate. If the user says "make this look …

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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3

attune In D&D, attunement is how you bond with a magic item so it works specifically for you. The real-world version is work…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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4

charm-person Charm Person is about ONE-TO-ONE interpersonal communication where warmth, honesty, and respect for autonomy are the …

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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5

dancing-lights Use this spell for lightweight indicators: status pips, progress markers, heartbeat widgets, and ambient observabilit…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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6

dimension-door Dimension Door is the quick-switch spell: branch to branch, environment to environment, project to project. It is not…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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disguise-self Disguise Self changes how something is said, never what is said. The input content is already correct — only the deli…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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8

dream Dream is asynchronous insight delivery timed to the receiver's readiness rather than the sender's convenience. It cov…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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enhance-ability Use this spell to apply a temporary, task-specific boost: priming a reviewer with the right files, warming caches bef…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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fear Fear makes targets run from danger. The real-world version is structured pessimism: pre-mortem analysis, worst-case s…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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11

feather-fall Feather Fall is the spell for bad situations that are already in motion. A deploy is going sideways, a service is thr…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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history In D&D, History recalls significant past events, legendary figures, and ancient knowledge. The real-world version is …

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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medicine Use this skill for live system triage: interpreting logs as symptoms, prioritizing immediate stabilization, and apply…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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14

mending Mending is surgical repair of a known-working artifact that has a specific, identifiable break. It is NOT: - Triage/d…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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15

message Message is the cantrip of communication: a Slack ping, webhook event, push notification, terse status note, or tiny m…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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16

performance Use this skill to turn dry technical material into a polished demo, narrative walkthrough, or audience-aware presenta…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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polymorph This spell is about representation change, not: - Naming changes (same structure, different identifiers) - Execution …

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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18

power-word-kill In D&D, Power Word Kill instantly destroys any creature below a hit-point threshold — no saving throw, no resistance,…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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programmed-illusion In D&D, Programmed Illusion creates an illusion that lies dormant until a specific trigger condition is met, then pla…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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20

resurrection Use this spell when a system has truly died — crashed, deleted, corrupted beyond repair — and needs to be rebuilt fro…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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21

scrying Use this spell when you need to see what is happening right now on a distant system rather than reading stale logs or…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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22

seeming Seeming is coordinated appearance change at scale: mass theming, batch rebranding, global copy tone shifts, and UI-wi…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

9

23

speak-with-plants Speak with Plants listens to slow, structural systems: codebases, dependency graphs, file trees, schema histories, an…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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24

tongues Tongues is universal translation across languages, formats, and protocols. It can mean English to Spanish, JSON to XM…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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25

vicious-mockery The bard's cantrip that deals psychic damage through insults. In practice this is adversarial review — the art of fin…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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26

acrobatics Use this skill when the work is a choreography problem: brittle sequencing, async handoffs, or constrained flows that…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

8

27

animal-friendship Animal Friendship is the first-contact spell for unfamiliar APIs, vendors, and services. It treats integration work a…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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28

animal-handling Use this skill when the system is not fully broken but behaves like a skittish animal: flaky CI, fragile legacy servi…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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29

animal-messenger Animal Messenger is for delivery paths that are asynchronous, delayed, or a little scruffy. It fits webhook queues, b…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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30

animate-objects This spell transforms inert → reactive. It does NOT create new tools, train models, run one-off fixes, or build physi…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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31

arcana In D&D, Arcana is knowledge of magic, its traditions, symbols, and mechanisms. The real-world version is deep technic…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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athletics Use this skill when the job is mostly about sustained force: large batches, exhaustive passes, long-running jobs, or …

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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33

awaken Awaken gives a non-intelligent system a usable voice without pretending the underlying system became sentient. The re…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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bane Bane curses targets, making them worse at everything they try. The real-world version is systematic weakness analysis…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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bestow-curse Bestow Curse saddles a target with a lasting disadvantage. The real-world version is constraint injection: deliberate…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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blindness-deafness In D&D, Blindness/Deafness selectively removes one sense — the target can still act but loses critical awareness. The…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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calm-emotions Calm Emotions suppresses strong feelings, ending fear and charm effects. The real-world version is de-escalation: dra…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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clairvoyance In D&D, Clairvoyance lets you place an invisible sensor in a location you know, seeing or hearing through it. Unlike …

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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comprehend-languages Use this skill when the words are legible but the meaning is trapped inside an unfamiliar dialect, format, or communi…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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confusion Confusion makes targets act randomly and unpredictably. The real-world version is chaos engineering: injecting contro…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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cure-wounds Cure Wounds is the hotfix spell: immediate triage to stop bleeding and restore function. It is NOT root-cause analysi…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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deception Use this skill to generate believable synthetic artifacts for testing, demos, adversarial exercises, or rehearsal env…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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detect-magic Use this skill when you need a fast, structured scan for where the real magic is hiding in a repo, workflow, or syste…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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detect-thoughts In D&D, Detect Thoughts lets you read surface thoughts and probe deeper. The real-world version is intent analysis: f…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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dispel-magic Use this spell when you need to cleanly shut down, disable, or remove active AI tooling — the reverse of Detect Magic.

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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enthrall Enthrall makes an audience hang on every word. The real-world version is structural engagement: opening hooks that st…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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etherealness Etherealness is observational only. It answers "what is happening?" or "what would happen?" without changing anything…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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eyebite In D&D, Eyebite lets you focus on one creature per turn and inflict sleep, panic, or sickness through sustained eye c…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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49

faerie-fire Faerie Fire marks things that are already known. It does not search, discover, explain, translate, or fix. The user h…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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feeblemind In D&D, Feeblemind crushes a creature's Intelligence and Charisma to near-zero — leaving them alive but barely functi…

hmbown/wizards-of-the-ghosts

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