Why not Six Thinking Hats, SWOT, ...

A library that grades honestly has to be willing to say no. Most “thinking tools” collections grow by addition: every named method gets a card. This one keeps a selection bar, so a method earns its place or it does not ship. The list below is generated from the framework registry, so it can never drift from the verdicts: each method appears under the reason it is not a standalone skill here.

Folded into a shipped skill

The durable cognitive move already ships inside another skill, named descriptively. A second card would add a name, not a capability, so we ship the move and fold the ritual in.

• Stakeholder Lens Review - walk a proposal through each affected party’s eyes. Folds into Parallel Perspectives Review.
• Steelmanning - state the strongest version of an opposing view before responding. Folds into Red Team / Blue Team.
• Crazy 8s - eight sketches in eight minutes. Folds into Brainwriting 6-3-5 / NGT.
• Forced connections / Random stimulus - pair the problem with an unrelated stimulus. Folds into Far-analogy ideation.
• How Might We - turn an insight into an opportunity question. Folds into Problem Restatement.
• Is / Is Not analysis - sharpen scope by what the problem is and is not. Folds into Problem Restatement.
• Frame storming - brainstorm the framing, not the solution. Folds into Problem Restatement.
• Kill criteria / Tripwires - pre-decided stop signals and conditions. Folds into Premortem.
• Second-Order Effects - lightweight ‘and then what?’ prompt. Folds into Futures Wheel.
• Systems map / Leverage points - sketch elements/relationships; find intervention points. Folds into Iceberg Model.
• Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis - weighted scoring across criteria. Folds into Decision Option Review.
• MECE decomposition - mutually-exclusive, collectively-exhaustive split. Folds into Issue Trees.
• Silent writing before discussion - write independently first to prevent anchoring. Folds into Brainwriting 6-3-5 / NGT.
• Plus/Delta, Start/Stop/Continue, Rose/Thorn/Bud - fast retro formats. Folds into After Action Review.

Documented, not shipped

Included only with explicit caveats - a trademark, a narrow valid range, or a false-precision warning. The IP gate is open (branded methods are documented with attribution); the evidence and distinctness gates are not, so these stay out of the shippable set.

• Six Thinking Hats - branded parallel-thinking ritual. (Branded: Six Thinking Hats (de Bono method; “Six Thinking Hats” is a trademark of the de Bono estate / IP holders).)
• Five Whys - iterative why to trace a cause.
• Devil’s Advocacy - assign someone to argue against.
• Cynefin - sort clear / complicated / complex / chaotic. (Branded: Cynefin (The Cynefin Co. / formerly Cognitive Edge).)
• ICE / RICE / WSJF - prioritization scores. (Branded: SAFe and WSJF are trademarks of Scaled Agile, Inc.; RICE originates at Intercom.)
• Jobs To Be Done - frame demand as progress sought.
• Wardley Mapping - value chain vs evolution. (Branded: Wardley Mapping (licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Simon Wardley).)
• Blue Ocean tools - strategy canvas / four actions. (Branded: Blue Ocean Strategy / Strategy Canvas (registered marks of the authors / Blue Ocean Global Network).)
• Porter’s Five Forces - competitive-structure scan. (Branded: Porter’s Five Forces (associated with Michael E. Porter / Harvard Business School).)
• Dot voting - allocate limited votes.

Excluded on the merits

Weak or contradictory evidence, or redundant with a shipped skill. Excluded after honest grading, not for being unfashionable - and we say why.

• Disney Creative Strategy - dreamer/realist/critic cycle. (Branded: Disney Method (Dilts); “Disney” is a trademark of The Walt Disney Company.)
• Key Assumptions Check / Assumption Mapping - inventory and rank a plan’s assumptions.
• Double-crux - find the single belief whose change would flip each side of a disagreement.
• OODA Loop - observe-orient-decide-act.
• SWOT - strengths / weaknesses / opportunities / threats.
• 1-2-4-All / Round-robin / Lean Coffee / World Cafe / Open Space - scaled-participation group formats.

Out of scope (a sibling library)

Sound PM and business-domain methods whose home is pm-skills, not a cross-domain cognitive library.

• Opportunity-Solution Tree - outcome -> opportunities -> solutions.
• Value proposition contrast - sharpen vs the next-best alternative.

Candidates that clear the bar but are not yet built, and methods that ship as a recipe rather than a standalone skill, are catalogued in the Framework Library. The full selection bar, and how to propose a method that clears it, lives in contributing.