behind ask

The Question Genome Project.

A map of how questions help us see.

AI can generate an answer to almost any question. But it cannot guarantee that we are asking the question that matters. The Genome helps us examine the frame, listen for what may be missing, and find the next question worth carrying.

Living and unfinished · July 2026

why this matters now

The frame comes before the answer.

Answers are becoming abundant. A system can explain, recommend, summarize, plan, and persuade in seconds. That makes the quality of the question more important, not less.

AI is extraordinarily good at continuing the frame it is given. If the frame is sound, that can be useful. If the question is incomplete, defensive, inherited, or simply wrong, a brilliant answer may only help us move faster in the wrong direction.

A wrong answer wastes your time.
A wrong question can waste your life.

The Genome creates a pause before the answer. It asks what the first question assumes, what it leaves out, and what might become visible if we listen in another direction.

the live Genome

Find the question beneath the question.

A person rarely arrives knowing the title of the question they need. They arrive with a situation, a feeling, a conflict, a decision, or a fragment. The Genome listens for what is specific, considers three kinds of movement, then chooses the two strongest ways to keep looking.

clarify what matters

01

Make the real question, outcome, tension, definition, or stake more precise.

test the frame and reality

02

Examine what may be assumed or missing, including evidence, other people, customers, constraints, incentives, authority, and systems.

find movement

03

Restore agency, choice, conversation, or an evidence-producing next step without disguising advice as a question.

Underneath is a direction, not a synonym for psychological. The next useful layer may be personal, practical, relational, creative, or systemic. The Genome should stay faithful to the context a person brings rather than turning every work problem into an inner-life problem.

Choosing a question does not mean agreeing with its premise. It tells the Genome where to keep listening. The next two questions remain connected to both the original situation and the direction the person chose.

Six lenses create breadth without becoming six answers.

the person
What might this reveal about desire, feeling, identity, contribution, protection, or lived experience?
the frame
What definition, interpretation, inherited standard, or certainty may be shaping the question?
reality and systems
What do the work, evidence, customers, constraints, authority, incentives, or surrounding system show?
other people
What is happening between partners, colleagues, teams, leaders, or communities, including what is unsaid or unheard?
agency
What remains within reach, and what choice, boundary, request, or experiment is available?
meaning
What matters here, what is being protected, and what might make the situation worth meeting honestly?

The lenses stay backstage. The person should encounter clear, specific questions, not a taxonomy they have to learn.

ask curiosity modes

One word for where your curiosity is going right now.

A Curiosity Mode is ask’s name for the movement your questions repeat most right now. It is not a score or a permanent personality type. Follow another branch and your mode can change.

Clarifier

01

Your curiosity is sharpening the question until what matters becomes clear.

Challenger

02

Your curiosity is testing the frame against evidence, assumptions, and reality.

Navigator

03

Your curiosity is looking for the choice or direction that creates movement.

Excavator

04

Your curiosity is digging beneath the first explanation for what is really shaping it.

Connector

05

Your curiosity is tracing what is happening between people, ideas, and parts of a system.

Reframer

06

Your curiosity is turning the question until another way of seeing becomes possible.

Emerging

07

Your curiosity has not repeated one movement enough yet for a mode to lead.

About You perspectives can change the context and emphasis ask brings to a question. They do not decide your mode. Your current words remain the strongest signal.

your words in the path

Add what only you know.

Every step opens two suggested questions and another way forward: write the feeling, detail, thought, or question the Genome could not know on its own. Those words become part of the path and steer the next two questions. The result is one inquiry that can move through both suggested directions and the person’s lived experience.

Start a path →

mission, purpose, and vision

A map of questions worth carrying.

mission

To discover, preserve, and connect the questions that help us see what we could not see before.

purpose

To help people find the questions they cannot yet see, and become better able to ask them of themselves, one another, their work, their lives, and the world.

vision

To build the world’s most trusted map of human questions, not the largest collection, but the most useful, traceable, and connected one.

Trust matters more than scale. The internet already contains endless prompts, quotations, exercises, and lists. What is scarce is judgment, context, provenance, distinctiveness, and an understanding of which question may be useful next.

one project, two kinds of memory

The live Genome and the Collection have different jobs.

the live Genome

An instrument for this moment.

It creates questions from a person’s own language, follows the direction they choose, and holds a temporary path through one inquiry.

the Collection

A public memory worth trusting.

It preserves reviewed questions, their sources, their genome, and durable connections that can be explained and corrected.

The live experience is not limited to finding a match in the Collection. It can create a new question when the situation requires one. Generated session wording remains part of that inquiry unless separate research establishes that it deserves consideration for the public Collection.

community admission

The community can contribute without creating an approval queue.

Anyone with my ask can submit a question. The Genome reviews it as a system: deterministic integrity gates, the public rubric, a distinctiveness check against the Collection, and a connection test. The submitter sees the full review, can revise it conversationally, and chooses whether to submit the reviewed question.

01

listen

The Genome preserves the submitted wording and asks whether it is one genuine, self-contained question.

02

protect

Hard integrity gates stop spam, hidden accusations, diagnoses, unsafe material, personal information, disguised advice, and unverifiable attribution.

03

compare

The question is compared with the public Collection so a duplicate cannot enter simply because it is popular or phrased differently.

04

map

The Genome names what the question may help someone notice, scores the rubric, adds tags, and tests at least two defensible connections.

05

decide

A question enters automatically only when every hard gate passes, the score reaches 85, confidence reaches 78%, and the submitter accepts the reviewed wording.

06

correct

Questions that need work return with specific feedback. A removal-only control provides checks and balances after publication without turning Shane into an approval queue.

No one manually approves the queue. The system carries the admission burden; a human can only remove a published question when the system missed something.
Submit a question →

how the project learns

Every inquiry can reveal what the Genome cannot yet see.

Individual searches are not public questions. Together, recurring gaps can show where the project needs better language, broader sources, or a new kind of connection.

01

listen

A person brings a question, feeling, decision, conflict, or fragment in their own words.

02

build

The Genome considers clarification, testing, and movement, then chooses the two strongest complementary questions for this moment.

03

branch

Choosing one question gives the inquiry a direction. It does not require accepting the question’s premise.

04

measure

A path is better when more people leave with a question they could not see before, without losing the life or work context they brought. We compare question shift, usefulness, safety, time to a strong question, and where people stop across each kind of inquiry.

05

notice gaps

Repeated situations reveal where the Genome lacks language, source material, or useful movements.

06

research

Those gaps guide research across books, talks, interviews, traditions, communities, and the open internet.

07

review and connect

A sourced question becomes public only after it passes the rubric and its provenance, genome, and graph connections can be defended.

Demand can reveal a gap. It cannot decide what deserves to become public.

the public question map

Questions are not a list. They are a field.

Each dot is a question in the public Collection. Each line is a working claim about why one question may usefully lead to another.

Mapping the questions…

This map shows the work as it exists now. Some connections are directly curated. Others remain research proposals waiting for stronger evidence or human review. Every claim can be revised.

the Genome’s promise

A useful question requires restraint.

The Genome should help someone listen more honestly without pretending to know their inner life. These principles govern every live path.

specific
A question should clearly belong to this inquiry. If it could have been written for almost anyone, it is not ready.
open
It should make room for an honest answer, not hide our interpretation inside the question.
humble
The Genome offers hypotheses, never diagnoses, verdicts, or claims about motives it cannot know.
agentic
At least one direction should help the person find what remains within reach.
ready
The depth and directness of a question should fit the language and intensity of the moment.
complementary
The two questions should create different kinds of movement, not repeat the same idea in different words.

methodology

Rigor belongs under the surface.

The public experience should stay simple. Underneath it, the project keeps live question generation, source research, public admission, provenance, graph claims, and evaluation separate so one kind of evidence is never mistaken for another.

How a live question is judged8 dimensions · minimum 85

Generated questions carry a higher burden because they are built for a person in a specific moment. Every integrity gate must pass before scoring.

question shift20

Does it reveal a more useful question through a person, relationship, fact, customer, craft, constraint, system, tradeoff, assumption, meaning, or area of agency?

specificity15

Could this question have been built for this inquiry rather than almost anyone?

movement15

Does it change what becomes available to notice instead of restating the input?

openness10

Can the person answer honestly without being pushed toward our explanation?

continuity10

Does it remain inside the person’s inquiry while opening a new layer?

clarity10

Is there one plain question with no explanatory burden?

generativity10

Could an honest answer produce a more precise next question?

complementarity10

Does it perform a role the other questions in this path do not?

How a question enters the Collectionintegrity · quality · provenance · distinctiveness

A community question cannot be a slogan wearing a question mark, a hidden accusation, several prompts stacked together, an unverifiable attribution, or a duplicate that adds nothing. Every integrity gate must pass, the weighted score must reach 85, confidence must reach 78%, and at least two graph connections must be defensible before automatic admission.

movement20

Could an honest answer change how someone sees, feels, decides, acts, or relates?

listening depth15

Does it create room to notice something instead of rewarding a polished performance?

generativity15

Does it naturally produce a more precise next question?

clarity10

Can the intended reader understand it without explanation?

openness10

Can the answer genuinely surprise the asker?

traction10

Is it specific enough to give reflection somewhere to begin?

re-askability10

Could it matter again in another season, relationship, or decision?

productive discomfort5

Is the difficulty in the truth it invites rather than confusing wording?

distinctiveness5

Does it add something the public Collection does not already hold?

How connections are describeddirected · typed · explainable · reversible

“Related” is not enough. Every public edge should name the kind of movement it offers, its direction, its rationale, its confidence, and its review state.

go underneath
Move from the first account toward what is actually shaping it: a need, fact, customer, constraint, incentive, system, relationship, assumption, identity, origin, or meaning.
see it another way
Change the frame without pretending the new frame is automatically true.
try the other side
Test an inversion, tension, or possibility the first question omitted.
make it real
Move from abstraction to a moment, behavior, person, cost, or choice.
ask someone
Carry the inquiry out of private reflection and into a relationship.
go back to where this began
Listen for an earlier adaptation, inherited story, or unmet need.
How sources and representation are protectedevidence · difference · responsible access

Discovery begins with what the Collection lacks. Source research looks across domain, practice, era, region, language, source form, lived context, and question movement. Fame adds nothing.

Representation is audited within every domain, not only across the Collection as a whole. Identity is never guessed from a name. Unknown remains a valid and explicit state.

How claims are testedfrozen inquiries · audits · open standards

The rubric, live Genome, and graph are hypotheses. Each version is evaluated against frozen inquiries and source-balanced test sets. A change should improve specificity, usefulness, safety, and time to three strong questions, not merely make the system look more complex.

The data model draws from W3C PROV-O, W3C SKOS, and the FAIR principles. These standards support traceability and reuse. They do not decide what makes a question good.

open by design

The work should be inspectable.

The public map data is available now. Taxonomy, question, edge, provenance, and change history can become more open as attribution and rights are made ready for responsible reuse.

Inspect the live graph data →Suggest a correction →

The project is working when someone enters with the question they already know and leaves carrying one they could not see before.

Find the questions under your question →