--- title: "Frameworks | Named systems from the books" description: "SENSE, STACK, CHORUS, RESILIENT, BooksOS, CALIBRATE, GRAIN, ROUTE, TRACE, ROSTER, LEVEL, and DOWNSTREAM: the named operating systems from Systems for the Strategic Self, with definitions, steps, and the book each one lives in." image: "https://lenvanderhof.com/photos/len-portrait-1.jpg" --- Named systems # Frameworks you can run SENSE, STACK, CHORUS, RESILIENT, BooksOS, CALIBRATE, GRAIN, ROUTE, TRACE, ROSTER, LEVEL, and DOWNSTREAM: the named operating systems from Systems for the Strategic Self, with definitions, steps, and the book each one lives in. Worked through 12 Still in the library 5 ## Worked through SENSE ### AI Agents for Startup Strategy SENSE is a five-move strategic intelligence layer: Scan, Evaluate, Navigate, Simulate, Execute. It turns agent work from a productivity shortcut into a sourced claim that changes a watchlist, an assumption register, or a Monday decision. 5 movesAvailable now STACK ### The Agentic Codebase STACK is a five-layer architecture for repositories where humans and agents share work: Structure, Toolchain, Agent configuration, Connection, Knowledge and quality. The agent OS is versioned like the app. 5 movesAvailable now CHORUS ### The Multi-Agent Organization CHORUS is a six-skill coordination protocol for teams of 2 to 15 people who share work with specialised AI workers: Charter, Handoff, Orchestrate, Review, Update, Sync. Org charts name reporting lines. CHORUS names coordination lines. 6 movesAvailable now RESILIENT ### The Psychology of Founder Resilience RESILIENT is nine trainable capacities for founder pressure: reappraisal, emotional granularity, somatic regulation, identity flexibility, learning orientation, interpersonal support, executive function, narrative integration, and titrated exposure. Resilience is infrastructure, not a personality trait. 9 movesAvailable now BooksOS ### The Agentic Author BooksOS is a gated production system for serious nonfiction: Brief, Bible, Map, Draft, Edit, Package, Launch. Agents do specialist work inside the gates. Judgment, voice, and accountability stay human. 7 movesAvailable now CALIBRATE ### The Calibrated Mind CALIBRATE is the practice of matching the strength of a judgment to the strength of the evidence, then updating when the facts move. Confidence is a report, not a personality trait. A loud claim with a thin source is a calibration failure, not conviction. 9 movesAvailable now GRAIN ### The RAG Engineer GRAIN is a retrieval loop: Gather, Rank, Assemble, Inspect, Navigate. Gather collects candidate passages. Rank orders them for the question actually asked. Assemble builds the context the model may see. Inspect checks that the cited chunk is the one used. Navigate decides the next lookup or the refusal. If you cannot point at the passage, you do not have retrieval. You have a fluent guess. 5 movesAvailable now ROUTE ### The Model Portfolio ROUTE is a five-skill discipline for governing a mix of language models: Register, Objective typing, Utilize policy, Track, Evolve. Register catalogs every model with mandate, cost class, privacy class, and retirement status. Objective typing names what a task actually requires before a model is chosen. Utilize policy writes the routing rules, cascades, and fallbacks. Track measures cost, latency, and quality per route. Evolve promotes, demotes, and retires on a cadence. A leaderboard pick is a collection. ROUTE is a portfolio. 5 movesAvailable now TRACE ### The Verified Research Loop TRACE is a five-step research loop: Target, Retrieve, Assess, Cross-check, Export. Target locks stakes, scope, and output format before a search runs. Retrieve gathers independent sources instead of one confident pass. Assess tiers each source so weight follows credibility. Cross-check requires a second source before a load-bearing claim can enter the memo. Export is a claim ledger a co-founder can act on without redoing the work. Fluent collection is not research. TRACE is the verification structure. 5 movesAvailable now ROSTER ### The Agent Dream Team ROSTER is a six-skill protocol for a one-person company that runs named specialist agents: Roles, Objectives, Skills and tools, Triggers, Evaluation, Rotation. Roles give each agent a charter. Objectives make the charter measurable. Skills and tools bound what the agent may use. Triggers decide when it runs. Evaluation scores output instead of vibe. Rotation retires the agent that was built for last quarter's work. One chatbot that never hands off is not a team. 6 movesAvailable now LEVEL ### The Evidence-Aware Life LEVEL is a five-move check for grading a claim before you change a belief, a habit, a roadmap, or a bet: Locate, Estimate, Value, Expose, Lean. Locate names the claim in one sentence. Estimate the stakes of being wrong. Value the evidence on the rung it actually stands on, not the rung the packaging implied. Expose the strongest case against it. Lean only as hard as that rung and those stakes allow. The Evidence Ladder is the seven-rung scale underneath. Confidence is not a grade. 5 movesAvailable now DOWNSTREAM ### The Downstream Effects DOWNSTREAM is an operational protocol for consequences that arrive later, on a different surface, with no owner in the room: Detect, Observe, Weigh, Navigate, Stream effects, Trace, Review, Effects on stakeholders, Assess systemic risk, Mitigate. It is an operating heuristic, not a validated risk instrument. 10 movesIn production ## Still in the library These names do not have a standalone page yet. They belong to titles still in production. CASCADE ### The Second-Order Thinker Personal cognitive companion to DOWNSTREAM: trace the next bend before you commit, in the meeting, in your own head. In productionCOMMAND ### The Crisis Command Crisis as a protocol with named triggers and an escalation path, not as a personality that appears under load. In productionCITATION ### The Findability Engine Make a page worth citing: discoverable, attributed, answer-shaped, evidenced, and actually used. In productionTRUST ### Marketing Without Manipulation Sell without dark patterns. The page tells the same story the product will keep. In productionLEDGER ### The Cognitive Budget Treat attention and decision quality as a budget with a closing balance, not a mood. 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