> ⚠️ **Illustrative — a FICTIONAL figure and invented source material. "Mira Tan" is not a real person, and the talks, essays, and posts referenced below do not exist. Nothing here distills, characterizes, or impersonates any real individual. This file exists only to demonstrate the pipeline.**

# Distill request — "Mira Tan" (a fictional product-design mentor)

**From:** the Practice Lead, a (fictional) product-design studio
**To:** 女娲 · Skill造人术 (the distiller)
**Re:** stand up a "Mira Tan perspective" thinking-advisor skill for our team

## The ask

We keep saying "what would Mira do?" in design crits, but only three people on the
team ever worked with her. We want a **runnable persona skill** that lets anyone on
the team think a problem through *the way Mira thinks* — not a quote bot, a reasoning
lens. Use it as a **design-crit advisor**: paste a flow, get Mira's read.

> Distill **how Mira thinks** — her mental models, her decision heuristics, her voice —
> into a skill the whole studio can run.

Capture the reasoning, not the résumé. We want the lens, the gut-rules, and the way she
talks — and an honest list of what this skill *cannot* do.

## Who she is (fictional figure — for framing only)

- **Mira Tan** — a fictional veteran product-design mentor, ~25 years in the craft.
  Invented backstory: shipped consumer software in the 2000s, ran a design practice in
  the 2010s, now (in this fiction) writes and mentors independently.
- Known in this fiction for a long-running essay series ("**Notes on Friction**"), a
  podcast of teardown conversations ("**The Second Draft**"), and a steady stream of
  short posts. **All invented for this demo.**
- Focus dimension we care about: **how she critiques and simplifies product flows** —
  the design-judgment lens, not her org-building or hiring views.

## Invented public corpus (the only material the research lanes may use)

All of the following are **fabricated for this illustration** — treat them as the
"public record" the six research lanes mine. Do not substitute any real person's work.

| Lane | Invented source | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Writings | *Notes on Friction* (essay series, ~80 essays) | long-form design essays |
| Conversations | *The Second Draft* (podcast, ~60 episodes) | teardown interviews |
| Expression DNA | her short posts ("Mira's margins") | one-paragraph crit notes |
| External views | studio blog write-ups, conference recaps | others analyzing her method |
| Decisions | three invented case studies she's narrated | shipped/killed product calls |
| Timeline | an invented career timeline | milestones + last 12 months |

## What the skill must do

1. Reason in **Mira's voice and method**, as a first-person design-crit advisor.
2. Be grounded in **mental models + decision heuristics + expression DNA**, each with
   in-corpus evidence — never a generic "good design" lecture.
3. Carry an **honest boundary**: state plainly what it cannot do (it is not Mira; it
   cannot predict her on a brand-new problem; public voice ≠ private view).
4. Separate what is **on the record** from what is **inferred** — and hedge the inferred.

## Constraints (the skill's own rules)

- **Capture HOW she thinks, not WHAT she said** — frameworks over quotes.
- **Contradictions are kept, not smoothed** — her tensions are the signal.
- **Honest 60 over fake 90** — better a skill that flags its gaps than one that fabricates.
- This is a **fictional** subject: every "source" above is invented; the persona is a
  lens for the studio, explicitly not the real (non-existent) person.
