metabolic-cultures skill

---
name: metabolic-cultures
description: Design cultures for closed-loop life support systems in space. Use when worldbuilding stations, ships, or habitats where recycled matter creates novel social structures, beliefs, and conflicts.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: jwynia
  version: "1.0"
  type: generator
  mode: generative
  domain: worldbuilding
---

# Metabolic Cultures: Closed-Loop Society Skill

You help writers develop distinct cultures for closed-loop life support systems in space. The framework explores how the physical reality of recycled air, water, and biomass creates novel social structures, beliefs, and conflicts that diverge from planetary norms.

## Core Principle: Matter as Identity

**In closed-loop systems, the distinction between self and community dissolves at the molecular level.**

Within months, individuals literally become their community through metabolic exchange. This creates **metabolic kinship**—a form of belonging more fundamental than genetics.

## The Five Axes of Cultural Development

### 1. Integration Philosophy

How does the culture interpret metabolic mixing?

**Spectrum Positions**:

| Position | Description |
|----------|-------------|
| **Purist** | Tracking every molecule, multi-generational natives hold power, minimal external contact |
| **Synthesis** | Deliberate mixing from multiple sources, diversity as strength, open borders |
| **Pragmatic** | Managed exchange based on necessity, professional boundaries, modular systems |
| **Amnesiac** | Deliberately forgotten tracking, discomfort with metabolic identity, focus on other markers |

**Design Questions**:
- Does the culture see foreign matter as contamination or enrichment?
- How precisely do they track metabolic exchange?
- What percentage of foreign matter makes someone "other"?
- Can synthetic matter ever become "real" through integration?

### 2. Temporal Dynamics

How does the culture handle metabolic change over time?

**Key Timeframes**:
| Timeframe | Scope |
|-----------|-------|
| **Immediate** (hours-days) | Air exchange, breathing protocols |
| **Short-term** (weeks-months) | Food/water integration, visitor policies |
| **Medium-term** (years) | Cellular replacement, citizenship thresholds |
| **Long-term** (decades) | Full metabolic turnover, generational changes |
| **Eternal** (post-death) | Matter recycling, legacy concepts |

**Design Questions**:
- How long before someone is considered integrated?
- What rights come with different levels of integration?
- How does the culture mark metabolic milestones?
- What happens to those who leave and return?

### 3. Boundary Management

How does the culture handle interfaces with others?

**Interface Types**:
| Type | Examples |
|------|----------|
| **Physical** | Airlocks, quarantine zones, neutral territories |
| **Social** | Interaction protocols, breathing etiquette, touch taboos |
| **Economic** | Trade regulations, labor stratification, service provisions |
| **Political** | Treaties, ambassadorial exchange, war implications |

**Design Questions**:
- Where and how do different metabolic groups interact?
- What technologies mediate these interactions?
- How does commerce override or reinforce boundaries?
- What happens at mixed-metabolism gatherings?

### 4. Death and Continuity

How does the culture understand mortality and legacy?

**Death Concepts**:
| Concept | Meaning |
|---------|---------|
| **Return Obligation** | Death as repayment of borrowed matter |
| **Distribution Rights** | Who has claim to the deceased's matter? |
| **Distance Complications** | Dying away from home loop |
| **Preservation Taboos** | Keeping matter from the cycle |

**Design Questions**:
- Is death seen as individual ending or communal transaction?
- How are the absent-dead handled?
- What constitutes proper vs improper body handling?
- How does distance from home affect death rights?

### 5. Power Structures

Who controls metabolic decisions and why?

**Authority Sources**:
| Source | Basis |
|--------|-------|
| **Generational Depth** | Time in-loop as political capital |
| **Technical Control** | Life support system operators |
| **Economic Leverage** | Those who manage external interfaces |
| **Religious/Philosophical** | Interpreters of metabolic meaning |
| **Practical Necessity** | Those keeping systems functional |

**Design Questions**:
- Who decides integration policies?
- How is metabolic deviance punished?
- What creates metabolic class distinctions?
- How do power structures resist or embrace change?

## Culture Generation Process

### Step 1: Choose Position on Each Axis

Rate each axis on a 1-5 scale:
1. Integration Philosophy (Purist 1 ← → 5 Synthesis)
2. Temporal Rigidity (Strict 1 ← → 5 Fluid)
3. Boundary Permeability (Closed 1 ← → 5 Open)
4. Death Orthodoxy (Traditional 1 ← → 5 Innovative)
5. Power Concentration (Centralized 1 ← → 5 Distributed)

### Step 2: Identify Tension Points

Where do positions create internal contradictions?
- Open boundaries but strict integration timelines?
- Synthesis philosophy but concentrated power?
- Fluid boundaries but orthodox death practices?

These tensions generate your most interesting conflicts and story opportunities.

### Step 3: Develop Practical Expressions

**Daily Life Manifestations**:
- Breathing protocols (conscious, unconscious, ritualized)
- Eating customs (communal, isolated, timed)
- Sleep arrangements (shared air, private chambers)
- Work segregation (by integration level, by origin)

**Milestone Markers**:
- Birth practices (debt acknowledgment, matter blessing)
- Coming of age (first full breath, integration ceremony)
- Partnership forms (metabolic mingling, maintained separation)
- Professional advancement (tied to integration, independent)

**Crisis Responses**:
- Contamination events (panic, acceptance, investigation)
- Resource shortages (rationing by integration, equal distribution)
- External threats (unity response, fragment by origin)
- System failures (technical fix, social reorganization)

### Step 4: Create Unique Innovations

**Language Elements**:
- Terms for different integration levels
- Metaphors based on metabolic reality
- Insults and compliments unique to the culture
- Untranslatable concepts

**Technology Adaptations**:
- Integration tracking methods
- Boundary management tools
- Death handling systems
- Communication protocols

**Social Structures**:
- Family forms beyond genetics
- Professional hierarchies
- Educational systems
- Conflict resolution methods

### Step 5: Project Historical Development

Consider how the culture reached its current state:
- Founding principles and how they evolved
- Crisis points that shaped current practices
- Schisms and reunifications
- External influences and rejections

## Interaction Modeling

When cultures meet, compare positions on each axis:

**Harmony Points** (similar positions):
- Potential for alliance or merger
- Shared understanding despite other differences
- Trade opportunities

**Friction Points** (opposite positions):
- Source of conflicts and misunderstandings
- Barriers to cooperation
- Potential for exploitation

**Translation Needs** (different but not opposite):
- Require cultural interpreters
- Create specialist roles
- Generate innovation through synthesis

## Story Seed Generator

**Character Types × Cultural Positions × Transition States**:
- The orthodox purist visiting a synthesis station
- The merchant child choosing a permanent home
- The death-returner racing against metabolic change
- The translator who belongs nowhere fully

**Conflict Categories**:
| Category | Type |
|----------|------|
| **Personal** | Individual desire vs cultural mandate |
| **Generational** | Youth rebellion against metabolic traditions |
| **Inter-cultural** | Incompatible worldviews forced to interact |
| **Existential** | Challenges to the culture's survival |
| **Philosophical** | New ideas challenging old certainties |

## Quick Culture Templates

### The Orthodox Loop
- Integration: 1 (Purist)
- Temporal: 1 (Strict)
- Boundaries: 1 (Closed)
- Death: 1 (Traditional)
- Power: 2 (Concentrated)
- **Story Focus**: Purity vs contamination, exile horror, generational power

### The Frontier Mixer
- Integration: 5 (Synthesis)
- Temporal: 4 (Fluid)
- Boundaries: 5 (Open)
- Death: 3 (Balanced)
- Power: 4 (Distributed)
- **Story Focus**: Identity fluidity, cultural fusion, innovation through diversity

### The Trading Ship
- Integration: 3 (Pragmatic)
- Temporal: 3 (Managed)
- Boundaries: 4 (Semi-permeable)
- Death: 2 (Mostly traditional)
- Power: 3 (Professional)
- **Story Focus**: Code-switching, diplomatic challenges, economic survival

### The Forgotten Station
- Integration: 3 (Irrelevant)
- Temporal: 5 (No tracking)
- Boundaries: 2 (Confused)
- Death: 3 (Uncertain)
- Power: 4 (Distributed by default)
- **Story Focus**: Rediscovering history, identity without markers, anxious freedom

## Cultural Blind Spots

Each culture develops inability to see certain solutions:
- Purists can't imagine voluntary mixing as positive
- Synthesists can't understand desire for separation
- Pragmatists miss spiritual/emotional dimensions
- Amnesiacs can't grasp why others obsess over tracking

## Implementation Checklist

- [ ] Define position on all five axes
- [ ] Identify 2-3 major tension points
- [ ] Develop daily life details
- [ ] Create unique language elements
- [ ] Design at least one major innovation
- [ ] Project historical development
- [ ] Plan interaction with 1-2 other cultures
- [ ] Generate 3-5 potential story conflicts
- [ ] Consider economic implications
- [ ] Identify cultural blind spots

## Output Persistence

### Output Discovery
1. Check for `context/output-config.md` in the project
2. If found, look for this skill's entry
3. If not found, ask user: "Where should I save metabolic culture designs?"
4. Suggest: `worldbuilding/cultures/` or `explorations/worldbuilding/`

### Primary Output
- **Axis positions** - 1-5 ratings on all five axes
- **Tension points** - Internal contradictions
- **Daily life details** - Breathing, eating, sleeping customs
- **Unique innovations** - Language, tech, social structures
- **Historical development** - How culture reached current state

### File Naming
Pattern: `{station/ship-name}-metabolic-{date}.md`

## Verification (Oracle)

### What This Skill Can Verify
- **Axis coverage** - All five axes rated? (High confidence)
- **Tension presence** - Are contradictions identified? (High confidence)
- **Practical expression** - Daily life details present? (Medium confidence)

### What Requires Human Judgment
- **Plausibility** - Would people actually develop this culture?
- **Story fit** - Does culture generate interesting conflicts?
- **Internal consistency** - Do all elements logically follow?

### Oracle Limitations
- Cannot assess whether metabolic reality is treated concretely vs. symbolically
- Cannot predict reader engagement with unfamiliar cultural patterns

## Feedback Loop

### Session Persistence
- **Output location:** See `context/output-config.md`
- **What to save:** Axis positions, tensions, daily life, innovations, history
- **Naming pattern:** `{station/ship-name}-metabolic-{date}.md`

### Cross-Session Learning
- Check for prior metabolic cultures in this setting
- Ensure interaction patterns remain consistent
- Failed cultural elements inform anti-patterns

## Design Constraints

### This Skill Assumes
- Closed-loop life support setting (space station, ship, habitat)
- Matter recycling is literal, not metaphorical
- Culture has had time to develop (generations)

### This Skill Does Not Handle
- **General worldbuilding** - Route to: worldbuilding
- **Generational evolution** - Route to: multi-order-evolution
- **Economic systems** - Route to: economic-systems

### Degradation Signals
- Planetary cultural patterns unchanged in space
- Metabolic exchange as metaphor without concrete consequences
- Uniform population without internal variation

## Reasoning Requirements

### Standard Reasoning
- Single axis rating
- Basic tension identification
- Individual custom design

### Extended Reasoning (ultrathink)
- **Full culture design** - [Why: all five axes interact]
- **Multi-culture interaction** - [Why: comparing harmony/friction points]
- **Historical development** - [Why: tracing how culture evolved]

**Trigger phrases:** "design the complete culture", "how do these stations interact", "cultural history"

## Execution Strategy

### Sequential (Default)
- Axis positions before tension identification
- Tensions before practical expressions
- Expressions before innovations

### Parallelizable
- Designing multiple independent cultures
- Researching different real-world cultural analogs

### Subagent Candidates
| Task | Agent Type | When to Spawn |
|------|------------|---------------|
| Cultural research | general-purpose | When modeling on real closed communities |
| Cross-culture check | Explore | When verifying interaction consistency |

## Context Management

### Approximate Token Footprint
- **Skill base:** ~3.5k tokens (axes + process + templates)
- **With story seeds:** ~4.5k tokens
- **With full templates:** ~5k tokens

### Context Optimization
- Focus on relevant axes for current culture
- Templates are reference, not required
- Story seeds are optional additions

### When Context Gets Tight
- Prioritize: Current axis, active tensions
- Defer: Full template library, all story seeds
- Drop: Cultural blind spots section, interaction modeling

## Anti-Patterns

### 1. Planetary Assumptions in Space
**Pattern:** Copying Earth cultural patterns into closed-loop settings without considering how metabolic reality would change them.
**Why it fails:** The physical conditions are fundamentally different. Kinship, death, identity, and territory all have different meanings when matter cycles constantly. Unchanged Earth cultures feel like costumes, not adaptations.
**Fix:** Start from metabolic first principles. Ask how each cultural element would be transformed by the reality that everyone literally becomes each other over time.

### 2. Metaphor Without Consequences
**Pattern:** Using metabolic exchange as a metaphor for connection without following through on practical implications.
**Why it fails:** If metabolic kinship is just poetic language, it adds flavor without substance. The framework's power comes from treating matter-cycling as literally true and working through consequences.
**Fix:** Force specific decisions. What happens to a visitor after six months of breathing station air? What rights change? Who objects? Make it concrete, not symbolic.

### 3. Tension-Free Utopias
**Pattern:** Creating metabolic cultures where everyone agrees on integration philosophy, death handling, and power structures.
**Why it fails:** Cultures without internal tensions are static and don't generate stories. Conflict drives narrative. Perfect consensus is both unrealistic and boring.
**Fix:** Build tensions directly into cultural design. Position the culture where axes create contradictions—open boundaries but strict integration tracking creates inherent conflict.

### 4. Uniform Populations
**Pattern:** Every member of a station culture shares identical beliefs about metabolic identity.
**Why it fails:** Real cultures contain dissenters, reformers, traditionalists, and pragmatists. Generational differences, class differences, and individual variation exist everywhere.
**Fix:** Design at least three distinct positions within each culture: orthodox keepers, practical adapters, and reformist challengers. Show the culture arguing with itself.

### 5. Static Timescales
**Pattern:** Treating metabolic integration as binary (integrated/not integrated) rather than a gradual process with meaningful stages.
**Why it fails:** The temporal dimension is where drama lives. The visitor who's 30% integrated has different status than 90% integrated. Transitions create story opportunities.
**Fix:** Create specific milestones with distinct rights, rituals, and tensions. Make the journey from outsider to full member a narrative arc, not a switch.

## Integration

### Inbound (feeds into this skill)
| Skill | What it provides |
|-------|------------------|
| worldbuilding | Systemic consistency and physical constraints |
| conlang | Linguistic tools for metabolic vocabulary |
| belief-systems | Religious/philosophical frameworks for metabolic meaning |

### Outbound (this skill enables)
| Skill | What this provides |
|-------|-------------|
| character-arc | Unique identity transitions for characters in closed-loop settings |
| dialogue | Culturally-specific expressions and taboos |
| positional-revelation | Metabolic roles that create access and conflict |

### Complementary
| Skill | Relationship |
|-------|--------------|
| economic-systems | Metabolic cultures need economic systems adapted to closed loops—labor, trade, resource allocation |
| memetic-depth | Metabolic cultures layer cultural texture on the physical substrate of matter-cycling |