The post highlights Leonardo da Vinci’s practice of cross-disciplinary study—observing flowing water to depict curling hair and birds to design flying machines—and notes he recorded these connections across thousands of notebook pages. The author adapted that approach into a Claude AI skill that provokes analogous field-to-field connections for problem-solving and published the build prompt for others to use.
Leonardo da Vinci studied flowing water to understand how to draw curling hair and studied birds to inform designs for flying machines, documenting insights across thousands of notebook pages.
Leonardo da Vinci studied flowing water to learn how to draw curling hair. He studied birds to design flying machines.
He filled thousands of notebook pages connecting fields nobody else thought to connect.
I turned that habit into a Claude skill that forces those connections for any problem I'm stuck on.
Here's the build prompt so you can make your own: 👇