Humanities Superpowers

한국어 · Documentation · Quick start · White paper · Manifesto · Examples

Structured research skills and quality gates for humanities scholars using AI agents.

Use AI without surrendering scholarly judgment.
Not an AI paper writer. A scholarly judgment scaffold.

Humanities Superpowers is designed to slow down the moments where fluent AI output is most dangerous: framing a question, defining concepts, connecting claims to evidence, testing objections, checking citations, revising judgments, and deciding whether a manuscript is ready to submit.

It provides 13 core research skills and one Level 3 router that selects the smallest valid route through them. It supports scholarly judgment; it does not replace interpretation, source verification, ethics, or authorship, and it does not promise a publication-ready manuscript.

Version 2.1.0, Dual-Core, adds a vendored engineering core for software work beside the unchanged research protocol. Version 2.0, Fricturn, made interpretive friction, traceable scholarly judgment, and epistemic return explicit. AI provides fluency; humanities provides friction. Neither addition replaces the project’s primary identity: Use AI without surrendering scholarly judgment.

Critical testing invited

The initial goal is to recruit 10 humanities researchers willing to test one research skill on a real project and report where the framework is too rigid, too technical, or methodologically weak. For Fricturn, criticism is especially valuable where the protocol misidentifies scholarly friction, over-formalizes ordinary interpretation, or obscures rather than preserves human judgment.

• Submit a test report
• Offer methodological criticism
• Report an installation problem
• Join a broader discussion

Literary scholars, historians, philosophers, digital humanists, DH librarians, graduate researchers, and scholars working in languages other than English are especially welcome. Do not post unpublished manuscripts, personal data, reviewer identities, or copyrighted source text; use anonymized descriptions and minimal excerpts.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/icerain-cmd/humanities-superpowers.git
cd humanities-superpowers
python3 scripts/validate_repository.py