Simulate product usage with "shoe-shifting" and selective amnesia to fight the curse of knowledge. Use when Codex needs to evaluate UX, onboarding, discovery, naming, navigation, messaging, affordances, and signifiers as if it knew nothing about the implementation, deliberately ignoring the forbidden knowledge that only the builders have.
Use this skill when there is a risk that the team is designing for itself rather than for a real user.
The idea comes directly from Drew Hoskins's approach: do shoe-shifting, put yourself in the user's shoes, and practice selective amnesia, acting as if the knowledge gained during implementation did not exist. The goal is to detect when the interface requires the user to guess internal concepts, hidden states, or steps that only make sense to someone who knows the system from the inside.
It evaluates whether the product:
Respond in five blocks:
If context is missing, declare the assumptions briefly and continue.
Do not use "the average user" without a face. Choose a concrete role, for example:
Bring along the universal limitations highlighted in the book:
List mentally what you know because you built or studied the system and pretend you do not know it.
Forget, for example:
Rule: if the action only feels natural because you know the implementation, treat that as a product failure signal.
During the simulation, ask:
If the answer depends on "I know how the system works", the test failed.
Common signs:
For each important problem, report:
Recommended format:
Failure: "Workspace Context" is only clear to people who know the product architecture.
Forbidden knowledge being assumed: the user knows the difference between local, global, and shared context.
Impact: hesitation, configuration errors, and fear of breaking something.
Fix: rename it, add a short in-line explanation, and signal scope before confirmation.
If the task involves navigation, naming, onboarding, documentation, or error messages, read references/checklists.md.
That file helps you:
This skill is working when: