Opening Moves Catalog

Openers are picked from this catalog at design time, by page genre — the corpus’s own writers work this way: pages are typed, and the type dictates the opening shape. Every specimen below is verbatim, verified at collection; the full evidence base is the blog craft research bank, and all attributions live in the Sources footer so the moves can be read as mechanics. The catalog exists because ten generated openers failed in a row before the corpus was consulted; derived moves replace invented ones.

The master rule, stated across the whole corpus: the first sentence carries the payload — the conclusion, the definition, the finding — never preparation for it. The operational form: “just say the most important sentence first.” A hook is impossible once the conclusion is already given away, which is why the frame below makes the banned devices unnecessary rather than merely forbidden. Scope, ruled 2026-08-13: the payload-first form is the strongest default, not a universal law — many pages may open by priming or backstory instead of a cold thesis (see the priming and backstory section below).

The master frame: the abstract

The corpus’s primary exemplar site makes this a mandatory house rule: every essay opens with a summary block — background, finding, conclusion — that gives everything away. The consequences do the work: nothing downstream carries persuasive load; anecdotes demoted below the abstract read as illustration instead of bait; a question below an abstract can’t hook because its answer sits above it. Pages then layer by resolution (abstract → headers → margin notes → footnotes → appendices), so the abstract is “the second-coarsest zoom level, not an entrance.” An optional metadata line (status · certainty · importance) states epistemic confidence once, structurally, instead of hedging sentence by sentence. Fit here: the abstract is the whole–part–whole opening whole done as structure, and the metadata line is the confidence dial with the mechanics removed.

First-sentence moves

The moves the corpus actually shows, each with a verified specimen. Genre notes map to this vault’s page types.

1. Copular definition. The term is the grammatical subject; “X is a Y that does Z.” — “Spaced repetition is a learning method based on computing optimum intervals…” The payload is sentence one; nothing is withheld. Fits: concept pages, glossary-shaped notes — the default for this vault. Execution law (owner strike, 2026-08-13: “i don’t think copular is working as an intro… you don’t know how to execute it properly”). The complement decides, not the grammar. A copular lands only when the “Y that does Z” is a thing the reader can feel or picture on contact — a prediction your nervous system makes · the trouble you cause other people · a condition of full absorption · a short stretch that puts material into memory — all accepted. When the complement is an operation between abstractions (matching felt certainty to the evidence behind it, specimen 28), the same grammar is a compressed step, and the page routes to a run-up that lands on the copular instead. When in doubt, ramp: the owner has chosen the run-up on every contested page to date.

2. Dated checkable fact. An object in the world, a date, a magnitude. — “GPT-3, announced by OpenAI in May 2020, is the largest neural network ever trained, by over an order of magnitude.” Sets the contract as claims-and-evidence. Fits: analysis pages, project write-ups.

3. Thesis as plain causal fact. The finding stated cold, no framing. — “One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people.” Fits: concept pages whose claim is causal.

4. Attributed folklore. A sweeping claim opened as someone else’s assertion, sourced, then examined. — “Statistical folklore asserts that ‘everything is correlated’…” The repair for any census-shaped opener: assert that the claim is asserted. Fits: pages examining a common belief.

5. Opposing position at full strength, then flat dissent. The rejected view stated generously in its own vocabulary; a new paragraph says “I argue that this is not an effective solution.” The reveal-flip with the theatre removed — nothing withheld, the count of reasons announced. Fits: argument pages.

6. Retell the object intact. The story or claim under examination summarized fairly before it is touched, the motivating defect arriving as a trailing clause — “…but the tank story is usually never sourced.” Fits: debunkings, reviews.

7. The debt. The page exists because a prior claim is outstanding — “I have called [him] ‘hubristic’… So I ought to explain what he did wrong.” Reason-to-exist without any bid for attention. Fits: follow-ups, personal notes extending an earlier position.

8. Definitional stack. The whole stated first, then its working terms defined in order — “Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep…” The specimen names what to do before it defines anything; the definitions follow the claim rather than clearing ground for it. Vocabulary handed over, not a feeling. A page that defines three components and names the thing in sentence four has opened in the parts, which is the one shape this move must not take. Fits: framework pages.

9. Unhedged absolute, scope repaired next. The claim at full strength, the boundary in the following fragment — “Nobody works eighty hours a week. Not eighty real, productive hours.” Confidence handled by sequence, never by in-sentence hedges. Fits: doctrine lines anywhere; the condensed pages already speak this way.

10. Epistemic preamble. Genre, status, and reader contract declared before content — “These are notes to myself. Your frame of reference… may vary.” Fits: personal notes and door pages; the Personal section’s intro already uses it.

11. Own practice, first person. A flat report of what the author does — “I try to write using ordinary words and simple sentences.” Cannot be false for the reader; the general principle gets earned afterward. Fits: personal register.

12. Real question, answered immediately. The question that generated the piece, discharged within a sentence — “…what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.” Distinct from a rhetorical question: it converts to provenance instead of hanging. Fits: research write-ups.

13. Scope fence. What the piece is not about, named warmly, then the subject by subtraction — “beautiful websites come in all sizes… This talk isn’t about any of those.” Pre-empts the wrong frame instead of pre-empting boredom. Fits: pages whose title invites a misreading.

14. Occasion plus deliverable. Why the piece exists and what shape it takes, in one sentence, then delivery — “People have asked me for advice on writing nonfiction online, so here are some tips:” Fits: workflow and how-to pages.

The corpus also holds two moves used by admired writers that stay off this vault’s menu: the concrete-example stack (fourteen examples before the principle — the examples are propositions, never scenes, but the family is close enough to the struck scene-opener to skip), and the literary gambit of the primary exemplar’s own early pages, which his later practice abandoned for the abstract — the stated reason being durability.

Priming and backstory openings (house-derived, 2026-08-13)

Every move above assumes the page’s subject can be received in sentence one — a term, an object, a finding with a name. This family exists for two reasons, one hard and one broad. The hard one: some pages fail that assumption — their subject is a relation between two ideas the reader does not yet hold together, so the whole cannot be said first however the sentence is built; the abstract is real and only statable after its terms exist (“this one needs prestudy or priming before the abstract can properly be defined”). The broad one, ruled the same day: “many pages can apply this ‘priming’ and ‘backstory’ intros. not everything needs to be a cold thesis intro.” Priming is required where no name exists and available wherever it serves the page; the cold thesis stays the strongest default for clean-definition pages, and variety across the vault is a stated preference, not drift.

Routing law (owner, 2026-08-13): pages carrying a core value or moral-core subject always take the priming treatment — “all moral core and core values get that treatment” — the run-up is part of how the value is held. Mechanical and technique pages stay on their referent moves; where a technique’s term is one everyone owns, sentence one carries the vault’s version and never the layman’s definition (L20a-i).

Detection, at design time. Ask whether sentence one can say what the thing IS, in words the reader owns, with a stable referent. Warning signs that it cannot: the title compounds two abstractions (“X and the Y”); the page corrects or extends another page’s model rather than owning a concept; the bank’s subject-in-plain-words needs two defined terms to parse. On such a page every referent move degenerates into a gesture at an unnamed thing. The five recorded costumes, all struck in one day on one page (Rejected Specimens 15–19): a metaphor as grammatical subject, a claim about the void, a population (“some people”), a type-figure (“the careful person”), a classified gerund (“being no trouble to anyone is a way of…”).

The scoped reversal. On referent pages, defining parts before naming the whole is the recorded fault (move 8’s warning). On a page with no nameable whole, the terms are the entrance, and the whole arrives the moment it becomes sayable. Same shape, opposite verdict, decided by one question: does a name exist?

The moves. The first three are the owner’s, given with the ruling; the fourth is derived from the same strikes.

15. Terms first, then the thesis. Each constituent term defined in one human sentence — its own miniature copular — then the thesis the definitions make possible. The thesis is still early and still the most important sentence; it stops pretending it could go first.
16. The why. Why these two things share a page, stated declaratively — the collision that makes the pairing necessary. Not the banned question-hook; no question mark required. The owner rates this the most important shape for pages of this type (2026-08-13). Companion law from specimens 20–21: the move is made, never announced — a label-phrase on-ramp (“The problem first:”, “The rule came first:”) is trite and loses the reader on contact.
17. The problem. The problem the page solves, stated as a situation the reader recognizes from inside; terms get defined as the problem statement needs them.
18. The borrowed referent. Anchor on the nearest named thing the reader already holds — a neighbouring page’s concept — and extend it onto the new ground. The referent must be real and named; a fresh metaphor in the subject seat is specimen 15’s fault, not a referent.
19. The backstory. Where the thing came from: the situation, lineage, or occasion that produced the subject, told propositionally — no scene, no characters — and landing on the thesis the moment the ground exists to say it.

The on-ramp law (owner, 2026-08-13, specimens 22–24). Priming is a bird’s-eye view — “something easy to look at.” The first sentences ask nothing: wide, familiar ground, low density, “a simple starting story,” each sentence a small step, with the thesis arriving only once the ground exists to hold it. Step height is density, not word count — a compressed thesis-atom in sentence one is a step however plain its words, and “big steps are not inviting.” The move is eased into, never dived into, and never announced (specimens 20–21). And the close is the ramp’s mirror: a primed page ends on the whole it opened from, advanced — “the ending and intro need to be mirrors. WPW for everything” (owner, 2026-08-13, specimen 25) — with the intro’s register governing the whole page between them.

Still binding here: no statistics in the opening, the sentence-one limits, no scenes, and the master rule in its honest form — the most important sayable sentence first, which on a primed page means last in the intro.

Use

Pick the move before drafting, by genre; under an abstract, the first body sentence needs no threshold work at all and simply starts the explanation. When none of the fourteen fits, first check whether the page has a nameable subject at all — a subject without a name routes to the priming family (moves 15–19). Where a name exists, the choice between a cold thesis and a priming or backstory entrance is a register call made per page; the fallback remains the master rule: say the most important sayable sentence first.

Read the move’s own entry before drafting, not a summary of it. Every move here is bound by the master rule, and where a gloss and its specimen disagree the specimen wins — the specimens are verbatim and verified, the glosses are description. The failure this prevents was real: move 8’s gloss once read “the working terms defined before any argument,” a writer implemented that instead of the specimen, and four regenerated pages opened by defining their components before naming the thing.

Openers are presented as several catalog-derived options for the owner’s pick — different moves, each written out in full, side by side. One candidate at a time is a funnel (ruled 2026-08-11), and serial rejection is the most expensive way to find a preference that a parallel pick finds in one round.

Sources

Master rule quote and moves 3, 11, 12: Paul Graham (“Writing, Briefly”; “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule”; “Write Simply”; “How to Do Great Work”). Master frame and moves 2, 4, 5, 6, 7: Gwern Branwen, gwern.net (style guide; “The Scaling Hypothesis”; “Everything Is Correlated”; “Why Tool AIs Want to Be Agent AIs”; “The Neural Net Tank Urban Legend”; “Death Note: L, Anonymity & Eluding Entropy”; “Design Of This Website”). Move 1 and the page-typing principle: Piotr Woźniak, supermemo.guru (“Spaced repetition” and the glossary genre). Moves 8, 9, 10: Naval Ravikant (“How to Get Rich” tweetstorm; “The 80-hour Myth”; “Life Formulas I”). Move 13: Maciej Cegłowski (“The Website Obesity Crisis”). Move 14 and the example-stack caveat: Scott Alexander (“Nonfiction Writing Advice”; “Beware The Man Of One Study”). Moves 15–17 and 19, and the register scope (“not everything needs to be a cold thesis intro”): the owner’s rulings, 2026-08-13, after five struck openers on one page; move 18 and the detection test: derived the same day from Rejected Specimens 15–19. Full verified entries: Blog Craft Research Bank.