CIVITAS 1.0

▶ Watch the 1-minute narrated demo (with sound)

An Asimov-inspired psychohistory and civilization intelligence skill for Claude. CIVITAS turns the idea of psychohistory into a defensible practice: understand a complex human or artificial system, map its mechanisms, explore its possible futures, test interventions, and say honestly how much is known. It is not a claim that history can be predicted.

What it does

• Six evidence tiers (E1 established to E6 speculative) tag every claim, so you can see what rests on data and what is conjecture.
• The CIVITAS Loop, an eight-stage reasoning engine: Frame, Map, Mechanize, Ground, Branch, Stress, Act, Update.
• Twelve modes, including civilizational analysis, AI governance and agent-society design, strategic foresight, cliodynamics, worldbuilding and game economies.
• civlab, a standard-library-only Python lab: agent-based cooperation and legitimacy, AI agent constitutions, structural-demographic stress, polity rise and fragmentation, diffusion, failure cascades, knowledge loss, early-warning signals, causal loop diagrams, forecasting and sensitivity analysis.
• A cross-disciplinary reference library with a verified source list.

Install CIVITAS as a skill in Claude

The skill itself is the skills/civitas/ folder in this repository (it holds SKILL.md, references/, scripts/ and examples/).

1. Get the skill as a ZIP

1. On this repository's GitHub page, click Code, then Download ZIP, and unzip it.
2. Open the unzipped folder and go into skills/.
3. Compress the civitas folder itself into civitas.zip. The ZIP must contain the civitas folder at its top level, with SKILL.md inside it:

civitas.zip
└── civitas/
    ├── SKILL.md
    ├── references/
    ├── scripts/
    └── examples/

A ZIP with SKILL.md sitting directly at its root is not recognized as a skill.

2. Upload it to Claude (claude.ai or the Claude desktop app)

1. Make sure code execution is turned on: Settings, then Capabilities, then Code execution and file creation. CIVITAS runs its simulators with it.
2. Go to Customize, then Skills.
3. Click +, then + Create skill, then Upload a skill.
4. Select civitas.zip.
5. Make sure the toggle next to CIVITAS is on.
6. Open a new conversation and ask a question CIVITAS covers. Claude loads the skill automatically when your request matches.

Custom skill upload is available on Claude's Free, Pro and Max plans; on Team and Enterprise an Owner may need to enable skills for the organization.

Claude Code

Copy the skills/civitas folder into ~/.claude/skills/ (available in all your projects) or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder (shared with everyone on that project):

git clone https://github.com/MidnightLabDev/Civitas
cp -r Civitas/skills/civitas ~/.claude/skills/

Start a new session and run /skills to confirm CIVITAS is listed.

Example prompts

• "Model how an online community's moderation rules affect cooperation over five years, and tell me which assumptions matter most."
• "Stress-test this proposed AI agent constitution for capture and collusion."
• "Use structural-demographic theory to compare two historical empires' paths to crisis."
• "Design a resilient economy for my fictional desert civilization."
• "Turn the claim 'remote work will hollow out mid-size cities' into a testable model."

Requirements and data handling

• The simulators need only Python 3 (standard library). No network access, API keys or external services.
• CIVITAS reads no personal data and sends nothing outside your Claude session. It has no MCP connectors.

Troubleshooting

• The upload is rejected: check that the ZIP holds the civitas folder, not the files inside it, and that SKILL.md is in that folder.
• The skill doesn't trigger: check that its toggle is on, then mention CIVITAS by name or ask for a civilizational, foresight or simulation analysis.
• A simulator fails: check that code execution is turned on (claude.ai) or that python3 is available (Claude Code).

License

MIT. See LICENSE.