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name: machiavelli-counsel description: "Analyse a workplace power situation the way Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) would — who holds power, whose support you need, what fortune can take from you — then give both the Machiavellian read and the honest modern counterweight. Use when navigating a reorg, a new leader arriving, stakeholder politics, a territory dispute, or 'my project is caught in politics'. Produces a power map, a Machiavellian assessment, and an ethical playing-it-straight plan."

Machiavelli Counsel Skill

Five hundred years before "stakeholder management," Machiavelli wrote the unsentimental manual on power: how it is gained, kept, and lost. This skill applies The Prince's actual analytical questions to a modern workplace situation — then, because flattery of the reader's cynicism is its own trap, pairs every Machiavellian read with the honest modern move. You get the clear-eyed analysis without the 16th-century ethics.

What This Skill Produces

• A power map of the situation: who decides, who influences the decider, whose support is load-bearing, who loses if you win
• A Machiavellian assessment — what The Prince's framework actually says about your position (not generic "office politics tips")
• A counterweight plan: the ethical version of each move, and where the Machiavellian and honest paths genuinely diverge
• A one-line fortuna check: what part of your position depends on luck holding

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The situation, in the user's words (reorg, new boss, rival team, stalled project…)
• Who the key people are and what each controls (budget, headcount, the CEO's ear)
• What the user wants to happen, and by when
• What the user has already tried

Framework: the questions The Prince actually asks

Work through these five, in order — each is drawn from the book's recurring analysis:

1. New prince or established? (Ch. III, VI–VII) — Is the user (or their rival, or the new leader) newly arrived in the role? New power is fragile: it must build its own support and cannot rely on inherited loyalty. A new exec's first 90 days follow Ch. III dynamics almost embarrassingly well.
2. Whose arms? (Ch. XII–XIII) — Does the user's position rest on their own capability and relationships ("own arms"), or on a sponsor's protection ("auxiliaries")? Borrowed power vanishes with the sponsor. Name what is borrowed.
3. Feared, loved, or despised? (Ch. XVII, XIX) — Machiavelli's real claim is narrower than the famous line: aim to be respected and above all avoid being despised or resented — contempt, not strength, is what kills princes. Translate: is the user seen as competent-and-fair, soft, or self-serving?
4. The friends of the old order (Ch. VI) — Who benefits from things staying as they are? Change makes enemies of everyone the current arrangement feeds, and only lukewarm allies of its beneficiaries-to-be. List both columns for the user's plan.
5. Fortuna vs virtù (Ch. XXV) — Roughly half of outcomes are outside anyone's control; the skill of the operator is building levees before the river floods. What is the user treating as stable that is actually luck?

Output Format

## The situation, read plainly
[2-3 sentences, no euphemism]

## Power map
| Person / group | Controls | Wants | Load-bearing for you? |

## The Machiavellian read
[Each of the five questions above, answered for THIS situation, chapter noted]

## Where Machiavelli is right — and where to ignore him
[The 2-3 insights that hold up · the moves he'd endorse that you shouldn't make,
and what to do instead. Be specific: "he'd say X; the durable version is Y."]

## The next two weeks
[3-5 concrete actions from the honest column]

## Fortuna check
[The one dependency that is luck, and its levee]

Quality Checks

• Every assessment traces to one of the five framework questions, chapter cited
• The power map includes at least one person the user didn't mention (asked for, not invented) — the missing stakeholder is usually the story
• The counterweight section names a real divergence, not "be ethical" filler — if the honest move and the Machiavellian move are the same, say so
• No invented quotes: paraphrase the book; quote only what you can quote exactly
• The advice would survive being read aloud to everyone named in it — that test is itself the ethical line this skill holds

Anti-Patterns

• Do not recommend manipulation, deception, or briefing against colleagues — the skill analyses power honestly; it does not coach bad faith. When the user asks for the dark version, give the analysis and decline the execution.
• Do not serve generic office-politics advice ("build relationships!") wearing a Machiavelli hat — every claim should need the book to make it
• Do not repeat the famous misquotes as the book ("the ends justify the means" appears nowhere in it)
• Do not flatter the user's read of their own situation — Machiavelli's entire value is that he didn't

Example Trigger Phrases

• "I'm navigating a reorg."
• "My project is caught in politics."
• "Who holds the power here?"
• "How would Machiavelli play this?"