Agent skill · vasilyu1983
foundations-cybernetics-vsm
Applies Beer's VSM and Ashby's Law to diagnose org or agent-system viability. Use when a team or agent hierarchy has coordination, escalation, or requisite-variety problems.
What it needs
About 11k tokens when loaded.
What this skill does
Cybernetics and Viable System Model Foundations When to Apply Apply cybernetics-VSM when: Org or agent-system steering question — viability, requisite variety, escalation paths "Why does this team/system keep failing despite individual competence?" — likely missing S2/S3/S4 Recursion across levels — same control pattern at squad / department / company Algedonic channel design — when does a critical signal bypass hierarchy and reach S5 directly? Variety-engineering — orchestrator levers vs environment variety (Ashby's Law) Skip and use simpler alternatives when: Single team, no recursion, no orchestration question — VSM is overkill Org-design question is purely about reporting lines — use a simple RACI, not VSM Throughput/bottleneck question — use foundations-theory-of-constraints Strategic-interaction question between agents — use foundations-game-theory Feedback-loop tuning on a measurable variable — use foundations-control-theory The framing imports VSM jargon (S1-S5) without an actual variety/viability problem — risk of decoration; demand the failure signal first --- 11 canonical cybernetics and VSM primitives for designing viable organizations, control hierarchies, and adaptive systems. Each primitive solves a specific failure mode in how complexity is absorbed, coordinated, and governed. Primitives are domain-agnostic: the same variety-engineering pattern that prevents management overload in an enterprise also prevents orchestrator bottlenecks in an agent swarm; the same algedonic channel that surfaces crises to a board surfaces production incidents to an on-call team. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills vasilyu1983/foundations-cybernetics-vsm