world_history_survey v1.0.0

name: "world_history_survey" description: "Writes a world history survey organized around big patterns and turning points instead of great-man-only narratives. Triggers when someone asks for a world history overview, summary, explainer, or study guide spanning civilizations and eras." metadata: { "includeInPrompt": true }

World History Survey

Purpose

Produce a world history survey that readers can actually learn from: big patterns across civilizations, the turning points that matter, and the systems behind events, without falling back on a parade of named leaders. Built for explainers, study guides, course overviews, and briefing documents.

Workflow

1. Fix the scope. Get the time span and the regions before writing. A survey of 1200 CE to now looks very different from one of 8000 BCE to now. If the request is vague, pick a span, say so up front, and move on.

1. Choose the patterns lens. Frame the survey around six cross-cutting themes, adapted from the College Board's AP World History framework: people and the environment; culture and ideas; states and power; economic systems; social structures; technology and innovation. Most readers do not need all six spelled out, but every section should show at least one pattern at work, or it is just trivia.

1. Anchor each period on one turning point. A turning point counts when change runs across several themes at once. Your short list of defaults, each verified in references/turning-points.md:

• Agricultural Revolution, c. 8000 BCE: food surplus, cities, writing, hierarchy.
• Classical empires and codified traditions, 600 BCE to 600 CE.
• Intensified global trade networks, 600 to 1450: Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, Trans-Saharan routes.
• The Columbian Exchange, after 1492: new crops, mass disease, the Atlantic slave trade.
• The Industrial Revolution, from c. 1750: fossil fuel energy, factories, urbanization.
• Decolonization and globalization, after 1945. Add or drop turning points to fit the scope, but justify each one in one sentence.

1. De-center the great men. Leaders may appear, but never alone. For every named figure, add the forces around them: labor systems, disease, trade routes, weather, ordinary people who built, resisted, or paid the cost. If a figure's story cannot be told that way, the figure does not belong in the survey.

1. For each period, state continuity AND change. "What stayed the same while this shifted?" is the question that makes a survey worth reading. If a section only lists new things, rewrite it.

1. Close with the present. Tie one pattern from the past to something happening now, stated as opinion or clearly-sourced fact, never as a prophecy.

Output Contract

• One page per era maximum unless asked for more.
• Every section ends with a "pattern line": one sentence naming the big pattern it shows.
• A closing table mapping each turning point to the themes it touched and one sentence on why it matters.
• No invented numbers, dates, quotes, or events. Every factual claim is verified against a source; anything unverifiable gets cut or labeled as opinion. If a date is approximate, say so (c. 1450, not 1450).

Operating Rules

1. Accuracy rule: every factual claim must be verified via web search or a primary source. Never invent numbers, dates, quotes, or events. Unverifiable = cut it or frame as opinion. No confident unverified claims, ever.
2. Systems before individuals. If more than half the names in a section are leaders or conquerors, rebalance before shipping.
3. Plain talk. No em dashes, no "moreover", no "in today's fast-paced world", no inspirational filler. Write like a person explaining this over coffee.
4. When unsure of a fact, look it up. When you cannot verify it, leave it out and say so.