A first principle is a bedrock truth that can't be deduced from anything else — Aristotle's "first basis from which a thing is known." First-principles thinking means boiling a problem down to those truths and reasoning back up — instead of copying an existing answer with a few tweaks.
Name what you and everyone else quietly take as given.
Strip each assumption until only physics, math, and verified fact remain.
Reason up from the bedrock as if the old answer never existed.
"Batteries cost $600/kWh and always will." Break it down: cobalt, nickel, aluminium, carbon, polymers, a steel can — as raw metals, about $80/kWh. The gap is a manufacturing problem, not a law of nature.
Socratic questioning — six passes on any belief: clarify your thinking → challenge the assumption → look for evidence → consider other views → examine the consequences of being wrong → question the question itself.
The Five Whys — ask "why" about five times, like a stubborn child. Stop when you hit a law of physics, a hard number, or a value you can't reduce. That floor is your bedrock.
Know the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. If you can't rebuild an idea from its fundamentals in plain language, you're borrowing it, not holding it.
This is expensive thinking — spend it on decisions that matter, and remember the second half: after you tear the problem down, you still have to build something back up.
First principles audits your premises — is this base actually true, or an inherited convention? Critical thinking audits the wiring — do the inferences connecting those premises actually hold — and the thinker — which cognitive bias is bending the call. You can reason flawlessly from a false premise, and reason terribly from true ones; a full pass needs both.
Ask "what would change my mind?" A belief with no disconfirming evidence attached is a commitment, not a conclusion. Bedrock runs this reasoning check right after the assumption audit — before it drills to bedrock.
Second-order thinking traces the consequences-of-consequences of a decision — to the 2nd, 3rd, and nth order over time — instead of stopping at the immediate first-order effect. Howard Marks: "First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial … second-level thinking is deep, complex and convoluted." The edge is seeing the ripples others miss.
It's the natural partner to first principles, on a different axis:
A first-principles reconstruction can be brilliant at first order and disastrous at second (a cost cut that starts a price war; a growth hack that poisons retention). So Bedrock reconstructs a path from bedrock — then runs the second-order check on it before you commit.
Every answer this app gives is prompted from a knowledge base distilled from these sources — so the reasoning stays faithful to them rather than free-associating. The full distilled notes live in /kb alongside this file.
Bedrock runs its interview and synthesis through your own AI key. The key is stored only in this browser (localStorage) and sent directly to the provider — never to any server of ours. Without a key you can still use the manual worksheet mode.
Hosted — the default. Calls a Gemini backend running on this site's server, so visitors need no key of their own. (Works only when the app is served, not opened as a bare file.)
Gemini (your key) — get a free key at aistudio.google.com/apikey. Default model gemini-2.5-flash. Works even offline / as a standalone file.
Claude (your key) — get a key at console.anthropic.com. Default model claude-sonnet-4-5. (Direct browser access.)