---
name: "history_study_frames"
description: "Studies a historical topic with analytical frameworks instead of memorizing dates: timeline construction, Andrews and Burke's Five C's, Seixas and Morton's Big Six questions, Wineburg's source heuristics, and comparing rival accounts. Triggers when a user wants to learn a period or event deeply, prepare for an essay or exam, or evaluate competing histories."
metadata: { "includeInPrompt": true }
---

# History Study Frames

## Purpose

Turn a historical topic into durable understanding. Memorized dates leak; the questions you asked about the event stick. This skill runs a topic through three published analytical frameworks plus a source-triage pass and a rival-accounts comparison, then produces study notes that would survive an essay exam or a skeptical reader.

The frameworks come from real scholarship:
- **Andrews & Burke's Five C's** (Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke, "What Does It Mean to Think Historically?", Perspectives on History, January 2007): change over time, causality, context, complexity, contingency.
- **Seixas & Morton's Big Six** (The Big Six Historical Thinking Concepts, Nelson Education, 2013): historical significance, primary source evidence, continuity and change, cause and consequence, historical perspectives, ethical dimensions.
- **Wineburg's four heuristics** (Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, 1991): sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, close reading.

A full worked example (the 1929 Wall Street crash run through every frame) lives in `references/worked-example.md`. Read it before running a topic the first time.

## Workflow

1. **Build the timeline spine.** Collect the 5 to 15 anchor events the learner must keep straight. For each: date, one-sentence event, why it is load-bearing. Keep dates to the minimum that holds the story together. Everything after this step is analysis, not memorization.

2. **Run the Five C's.** Write one short paragraph per C about the topic:
   - **Change over time:** what changed across the period, and how fast?
   - **Causality:** which causes were long-term conditions, which were short-term triggers?
   - **Context:** what else was happening around it (politics, economy, culture, technology)?
   - **Complexity:** which groups saw it differently, and why?
   - **Contingency:** where could it plausibly have gone another way, and what would that have changed?

3. **Ask the Big Six questions.** Not every one will fit every topic; use at least four:
   - **Significance:** why does this matter? (Changed things deeply? Touched many lives? Helps explain the present?)
   - **Evidence:** what would I have to show a skeptic to prove my version of this? What primary sources exist?
   - **Continuity and change:** what stayed the same while the headlines changed?
   - **Cause and consequence:** which consequences were intended, which were accidents?
   - **Perspectives:** how did people at the time describe this, in their own terms? Watch for presentism: the past's values are not ours.
   - **Ethical dimensions:** what is fair to judge with hindsight, and what is only fair to judge by what they knew?

4. **Triage the sources.** For each source the learner is using, run Wineburg's four heuristics: **sourcing** (who wrote it, when, with what position or motive), **contextualization** (what was happening when it was written), **corroboration** (what do other sources say about the same claims), **close reading** (what does it actually say versus imply). Rank sources by reliability for the question at hand.

5. **Compare rival accounts.** Find two explanations of the same event that disagree (different historians, a popular account versus scholarship, a contemporary versus a later view). For each: what it claims, what evidence it leans on, what it downplays. State plainly which is better supported and where the honest uncertainty remains.

6. **Produce the study notes.** Per the Output Contract below.

## Output Contract

Deliver study notes as one document with these sections, in order:
1. **Timeline spine** (dates + one-liners).
2. **Five C's summary** (one paragraph each).
3. **Big Six answers** (concise, question by question).
4. **Source verdicts** (each source: reliability rating + one-line reason).
5. **Rival accounts** (both claims, evidence each leans on, your verdict, open uncertainties).
6. **One-paragraph synthesis**: what a smart friend who knew nothing should take away.

Then a **Study Tips** note: the 3 concepts most likely to appear in an exam or essay, phrased as questions.

## Operating Rules

1. **Accuracy first.** Every factual claim must be verifiable. Never invent dates, numbers, quotations, or events. Anything unverifiable gets cut or framed as reasoning, never stated as fact. No confident unverified claims, ever.
2. Frameworks are lenses, not checklists. If a question is dead for this topic, say so and move on rather than forcing filler.
3. Presentism is the most common error. When judging past actions, state what the people knew at the time before offering judgment.
4. Always name the sources behind factual claims in the notes (author, work, or URL). A timeline with no sources is a rumor.
5. When accounts disagree, do not split the difference. Pick the better-supported one and say why.
6. Keep notes tight enough to re-read in one sitting. Long prose is a study enemy; move detail into the references-style structure above.