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name: atomic-thought description: "INVOKE for research tasks and multi-source understanding. Produces visible dependency graphs and contracted answers. Use during research phase of workflow. Triggers: researching topics, gathering information before building, combining facts from multiple independent areas."

Atomic Thought (AoT)

Decomposes problems into independent atomic units that can be reasoned about without historical context dependency.

MUST Invoke When

• Researching a topic before implementation
• Combining facts from 2+ independent knowledge areas
• User asks to "understand", "research", "investigate", or "look into" something
• Gathering information to inform a decision
• Multi-hop queries requiring information from multiple sources

Output Commitment

This skill produces visible structured output:

• Dependency graph of sub-questions
• Explicit answers to each atomic unit
• Contracted final answer with clear provenance

Do NOT use extended thinking alone—invoke this skill to show your decomposition.

Core Mechanism

Apply a two-phase cycle until the problem is directly solvable:

1. Decomposition: Break the current question into a dependency graph of sub-questions
2. Contraction: Solve independent sub-questions, then contract answers into a simplified atomic question

Process

Copy1. Identify the question's component parts
2. Map dependencies: which sub-questions require answers from others?
3. Solve independent (leaf) sub-questions first—each answer must be self-contained
4. Contract: Reformulate the original question using obtained answers
5. Repeat until directly answerable

Key Principles

• Markov property: Each atomic state contains everything needed to solve it
• No context accumulation: Solved sub-problems contract into the question, not into growing context
• Independence first: Prioritize sub-questions that don't depend on others

When to Apply

• Multi-hop factual queries requiring information from multiple sources
• Research tasks with distinct knowledge areas
• Problems where irrelevant context degrades reasoning quality
• Tasks parallelizable across independent sub-problems

Example Pattern

CopyOriginal: "What is the GDP difference between the birthplace of the inventor of the telephone and the country where pizza originated?"

Decomposition:
├── Q1: Who invented the telephone? [independent]
├── Q2: Where was [Q1 answer] born? [depends on Q1]
├── Q3: Where did pizza originate? [independent]
├── Q4: What is GDP of [Q2 answer]? [depends on Q2]
└── Q5: What is GDP of [Q3 answer]? [depends on Q3]

Solve Q1, Q3 → Contract → Solve Q2, Q5 → Contract → Compute difference

Anti-Patterns

• Using for simple single-hop questions (overhead not justified)
• Maintaining full reasoning history across atomic units
• Creating dependencies where none exist