How to Live Better Skill
Life Decision Skill (SKILL.md)
Once installed, ask "use life-decision-guide to answer" to trigger it.
Install into your AI assistant Both tools share the same SKILL.md
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/life-decision-guide curl -fsSL -o ~/.claude/skills/life-decision-guide/SKILL.md \ "//howtolivebetter/skill/SKILL.en.md"
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills/life-decision-guide curl -fsSL -o ~/.agents/skills/life-decision-guide/SKILL.md \ "//howtolivebetter/skill/SKILL.en.md"
Run this in your terminal (or copy and paste it) to install SKILL.md into your personal skills directory; usable in any project afterward.
Usage notes
- How to trigger: Once installed, just ask "is a two-hour commute worth it?" or "a friend wants me to cosign a loan — should I?" and it fires automatically; you can also say "use life-decision-guide to answer" explicitly.
- Codex note: the trigger prefix is
$life-decision-guide, not/— in newer Codex,/life-decision-guideerrors with Unrecognized command; restart Codex if it doesn’t appear. - How it answers: it pulls the relevant entries from the book first, then ranks them the book’s way, tagging each with its chapter and tip number; if it can’t find something, it says so instead of inventing numbers from memory.
- Where the text comes from: if you have the HowToLiveBetter repo locally it reads
book/; otherwise it does a shallow clone once (about 1.3 MB, a few seconds); if there’s no network it says so honestly. - What it can’t replace: it only finds and ranks the book’s tips — it doesn’t stand in for a doctor, lawyer, or authority.
Fuller install notes (including the legacy Codex custom-prompt approach) are in README.en.md; the rules themselves are in SKILL.md.
About the Life Decision Skill
What is the Life Decision Skill?
The How to Live Better Skill is an instruction set for modern AI assistants (Claude Code, Codex, etc.), shipped as a SKILL.md file. It wraps the book’s 765 evidence-based tips, cost-benefit model, and A/B/C evidence grading into rules an AI can follow.
Instead of vague, probability-driven replies or hallucination, it forces the assistant to answer strictly by the book’s accounting and sourcing — turning static text into a dynamic decision engine.
What does it contain?
It has a trigger-and-retrieval layer: when you ask about a concrete scenario ("cosign a loan", "buy insurance"), it matches the right entries.
It integrates the book’s ranking algorithm — tips are re-filtered by ROI, evidence grade (A/B/C), and execution cost. Output must cite the exact source (chapter and tip number) and admit when nothing was found, keeping advice trustworthy.
Where does it come from?
The skill is owned by the original author and distributed under CC BY 4.0. This site offers the original file free, no sign-up, with the install script — we don’t alter the rules.
It is an information aid, not a licensed professional. It only finds and ranks the book’s tips; it never replaces a doctor, lawyer, or authority. For real action, follow the relevant professionals.