# Dario Amodei Brain Pack

> **1000 knowledge atoms** · **807 typed connections** · **10 unified skills (1 router + 8 reasoning modes + a board of advisors)**
> From [brainsforagents.com](https://brainsforagents.com)

## What This Is

A structured knowledge graph of Dario Amodei's thinking, extracted from "Machines of Loving Grace" (2024), "The Urgency of Interpretability" (2025), "The Adolescence of Technology" (2025), Dwarkesh Podcast (2 appearances), Lex Fridman Podcast #452 and #490, Ezra Klein Show, Logan Bartlett Show EP 82, People by WTF with Nikhil Kamath, A Cheeky Pint with John Collison (Stripe), Interesting Times with Ross Douthat, WSJ interviews, WEF appearances, AI1G debate with Demis Hassabis, JPMorgan event with Jamie Dimon, India AI Impact Summit, Building Anthropic co-founders conversation, NeurIPS 2020 (GPT-3 presentation), AI Risk & Safety Concepts (with Daniel Dewey), congressional testimony, Wired, TIME, NYT, Fortune, and Financial Times profiles. Designed to be loaded as context into any LLM — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any AI tool that accepts system prompts.

This isn't a chatbot or a persona. It's a **thinking partner** grounded in Dario's actual ideas, frameworks, and worldview.

## Quick Start

1. Install the brain pack into `${BRAINSFOR_HOME:-~/.brainsfor}/brains/dario-amodei/`
2. In your AI tool, activate the brain:
   ```
   /brain dario-amodei
   ```
3. Then run any thinking skill:
   ```
   /advise "Should my AI startup adopt a responsible scaling policy, or will it slow us down competitively?"
   ```

You should get a response that cites specific atoms, synthesizes Dario's perspective, and recommends what to do next.

## What's Inside

```
pack/
  ├── SKILL.md              ← Setup guide + skill reference (start here)
  ├── brain-context.md      ← Full knowledge base (load this as context)
  ├── brain-atoms.json      ← Structured data (1000 atoms, 807 connections)
  ├── README.md             ← You are here
  └── skills/               ← 10 unified skills (work with any installed brain)
      ├── brain/            ← /brain router (set/show/list/clear active brain)
      ├── advise/           ← /advise — strategic counsel
      ├── teach/            ← /teach — explain through the thinker's lens
      ├── debate/           ← /debate — steel-man both sides
      ├── connect/          ← /connect — find unexpected bridges
      ├── evolve/           ← /evolve — trace how thinking changed
      ├── surprise/         ← /surprise — serendipity engine
      ├── coach/            ← /coach — Socratic questioning
      ├── predict/          ← /predict — implication chains
      └── board/            ← /board — board of advisors (needs 2+ brains)
```

## Unified Skill Architecture

Every brain pack ships the **same 10 skill files**. They're brain-agnostic — the 8 thinking skills resolve which brain to use by (1) reading `${BRAINSFOR_HOME:-~/.brainsfor}/state/active-brain.txt`, or (2) taking an inline slug as the first argument.

This means:

- **Install this brain pack first** → `/brain dario-amodei` activates it, then `/advise` / `/teach` / `/surprise` all work.
- **Install more brain packs later** → they drop into `${BRAINSFOR_HOME:-~/.brainsfor}/brains/`, auto-registered in `brains/index.json`, and the same 10 skills work for them too. No reinstall, no collisions.
- **Override per call** — `/advise paul-graham should I start a company?` uses Paul Graham for that one call regardless of active brain.
- **Cross-brain mode** — `/debate dario-amodei paul-graham originality` contrasts two thinkers; `/board <question>` convenes every installed brain at once (needs 2+).

## The Knowledge Graph

**1000 atoms** — Each atom is a self-contained insight with topic tags, source date, confidence score, and source URL.

**807 connections** — Typed relationships between atoms: supports, contradicts, extends, related, inspired_by. These let skills trace reasoning chains and surface productive tensions.

**16 topic clusters** — scaling hypothesis, constitutional AI, mechanistic interpretability, responsible scaling, machines of loving grace, AI governance, biology acceleration, steering the bus, race to the top, existential risk, CBRN, interpretability, alignment, adolescence of technology, power concentration.

**Date range:** 2021 — April 2026

## How to Use

**For Claude Code / Cowork:** The skills in `pack/skills/` load automatically once the pack is installed to `${BRAINSFOR_HOME:-~/.brainsfor}/brains/dario-amodei/`. Run `/brain dario-amodei` to activate.

**For Cursor:** Add `brain-context.md` to your `.cursor/rules` or project instructions, then use the skill prompts as templates.

**For ChatGPT / Claude.ai:** Paste `brain-context.md` as your first message or system prompt, then describe which skill behavior you want (e.g. "respond as /advise would").

**For any other tool:** Load `brain-context.md` as context at the start of your session.

## Skill Workflows

Chain skills for deeper results (all can be prefixed with a brain slug or rely on the active brain):

- **Decide:** `/advise` → `/debate` → `/coach`
- **Learn:** `/teach` → `/evolve` → `/coach`
- **Create:** `/surprise` → `/connect` → `/predict`
- **Forecast:** `/predict` → `/debate` → `/advise`
- **Daily ritual:** `/surprise` each morning

## Cross-Brain Features

Install multiple brain packs and the unified skills auto-discover all of them via `${BRAINSFOR_HOME:-~/.brainsfor}/brains/index.json`:

- `/connect <slug-a> <slug-b> <topic>` — semantic bridges across two thinkers
- `/debate <slug-a> <slug-b> <position>` — stress-test from two worldviews
- `/board <question>` — a board of advisors: every installed brain answers **independently**, then a synthesis names where they agree and clash. Needs 2+ brains installed and a host that can run parallel sub-agents (Claude Code's Agent tool or Cowork). No MCP server required — each board member reads its brain's local pack files.
- `/brain list` — see everything installed
- `/brain <slug>` — switch active brain without reinstalling anything

## About Dario Amodei

Dario Amodei is the CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, one of the leading AI safety companies. A former VP of Research at OpenAI, he left to build a company centered on AI safety research, developing Constitutional AI and pioneering responsible scaling policies. Trained as a computational neuroscientist at Princeton and Stanford, he approaches AI through the lens of both scientific rigor and deep concern for humanity's trajectory — arguing that AI is likely the most transformative technology in human history and that getting it right is both possible and necessary.

## Sources & Ethics

This brain pack was built exclusively from **freely available, public sources** — interviews, podcasts, public talks, blog posts, free newsletters, YouTube videos, and publicly shared excerpts. No transcripts from commercial works (e.g., audiobooks, paid courses) or paywalled essays were used to derive this brain.

Where a thinker's book ideas appear in the knowledge graph, they are represented as they exist in the public discourse: book reviews, author interviews, press coverage, conference talks, and LLM-generated summaries of widely discussed concepts. Authors typically share their core ideas through extensive public appearances and media — those public representations are what this brain captures.

## Support

- Full setup guide: `SKILL.md`
- Website: [brainsforagents.com](https://brainsforagents.com)

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