Why does this exist?

I made Decomposer because I wanted to improve my judgement.

I wanted an editor that focused on structure

We consider ideas hierarchically.

The mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings in order to comprehend it.

Barbara Minto, The Pyramid Principle

In Decomposer, just as much as we’re editing text, we’re editing the hierarchy.

When you focus on the structure, you’re more likely to see gaps and inconsistencies. When you look at a point you’re making like this:

a
├── a1
│   ├── a1.1
│   ├── a1.2
│   ├── a1.3
│   └── b1.2
└── a2

It can lead you to ask questions like:

• Is a2 underdeveloped?
• How are a1 and a2 even connected?
  • Are they steps in a process?
  • Sub-categories? Are they mutually exclusive? Are they complete?
  • Is there a missing a3?
• Wait, b1.2 is doesn’t really belong in group a1..

I wanted to detach from every single point

There were things I wanted to root out from my writing (and thus my thinking):

• Emotional statements
  • e.g. “…which is incredibly frustrating”.
• False statements
• Intellectually Blank Assertions (borrowing this term from Barbara Minto)
  • Statements made without any reasoning behind them.
  • e.g. “We need to hire more”…why?

So I made the tool I wanted. A tool that arranges points hierarchically. A tool that helps eliminate weak points. A tool for rewriting.