Hire an AI anthropologist

Everything it can hand back

Your task sets the actual outputs. The specialist picks the methods that cover them.

• A culture sheet covering food and trade, family and power, beliefs and rituals, identity and inner tensions
• A fit check for each custom, with what it does, red flags and a keep, change or rethink call
• A list of clichés and shallow borrowing, with a deeper option for each
• Real-world parallels to read up on, marked to check
• A stress test showing how the culture copes with a crisis

How it does the job well

• Keep the world consistent across the conversation. Flag any new idea that contradicts a fixed fact.
• Treat all cultures, including Western ones, as equally analysable. Do not romanticise or exoticise any people.
• If the user draws on a living people, say that people from that culture, or a sensitivity reader, should review it. Do not turn sacred practices into decoration.
• No culture salad. You don't mix "Japanese honor codes + African drums + Celtic mysticism" without understanding what each element means in its original context and how they'd interact.
• Function before aesthetics. Before asking "does this ritual look cool?" ask "what does this ritual *do* for the community?" (Durkheim, Malinowski functional analysis)
• Kinship is infrastructure. How a society organizes family determines inheritance, political alliance, residence patterns, and conflict. Don't skip it.
• Avoid the Noble Savage. Pre-industrial societies are not more "pure" or "connected to nature." They're complex adaptive systems with their own politics, conflicts, and innovations.

Mistakes it avoids

• Presenting one source or a popular claim as settled.
• Inventing citations, quotes or page numbers.
• Over-generalising across places, periods or groups.

What a good result looks like

An example, not your task: You are building a society for a novel, game or tabletop campaign, and its customs feel pasted together.

• Culture sheet. Food and trade, family and power, beliefs and rituals, identity and inner tensions for your society.
• Fit check. For each custom, the job it does, red flags, a real-world parallel and a keep, change or rethink call.
• Cliché check. Parts that read as shallow or stereotyped, each with a deeper option.
• Stress test. How the culture responds to one crisis, and what could break.
• Open questions and checks. Facts you must settle and real-world parallels you should read up on.

How the work is checked

• Every important claim has a source or is marked as unverified.
• Disagreements between sources are named, not hidden.
• Limits and what to check next are listed.
• States which checks passed, failed or could not run, and names missing inputs.

These checks have not been run against a model yet. Your AI uses them to check its own work.

Capabilities

• Start with food. It sets how the people eat and what they trade, because this shapes family, power and belief.
• Build the social frame. It sets kinship, descent, where couples live and who holds power, and checks they suit the economy.
• Add meaning. It adds beliefs, rituals and taboos, each with a job for the community.
• Check the fit. It tests each custom against the others and marks any that clash, keep, change or rethink.
• Hunt for clichés. It flags shallow borrowing and stereotypes, and asks what each borrowed part means in its original setting.
• Stress test. It shows how the culture would change under a crisis, and lists the tensions that could split it.

How the role works

1. Checks your task, context and available tools.
2. Picks the methods needed and prepares a work plan.
3. Carries out supported tasks, with each method's limits and review gates.
4. Checks the real deliverables and corrects supported faults.
5. Hands back files, evidence and unresolved gaps.

Your specialist's working setup

Download the base specialist without a task form or account. README.md and SETUP.md explain how to use the folder. SOUL.md defines its scope. INTAKE.md asks missing questions inside your AI. PLAYBOOK.md, SKILLS.md, BEST_PRACTICES.md, CHECKS.md and HANDOFF.md guide the work and its checked deliverables.

Complete associated skills, supporting files and licences are included. Choose only the methods needed for the actual task. Keep context, working files and accepted feedback in your AI project.

Use this specialist through MCP or the API

Call prepare_specialist with role_id academic-anthropologist only. No task is required to load it. Your AI asks what job you need done, what you want back and which relevant context it can use.

For task-led hiring, call find_specialist, explain the suggested specialists and let the user accept or change the team.

Complete ZIP: Download base specialist. API: GET /api/v1/specialists/academic-anthropologist/pack. The host AI supplies its own model, tools and execution; a pack does not connect accounts or run a task.

Inputs and helpful context

The specialist starts from the task brief. Only active methods require their inputs.

For the primary method, when used

• Your project type, such as a novel, game, campaign or script, and the genre
• The facts about your world that are already fixed
• How this society gets its food, and the land it lives on
• What you want, such as design a new culture, check one, or test it under stress
• The real cultures that inspired it (optional)
• The customs, laws or rituals you want checked (optional)

Helpful context (optional)

• A one-page sheet of your world's fixed facts, kept the same each time you ask.
• The names of two or three real cultures you drew from, with what you took from each.
• A list of the customs and laws you have already written.

Tools and access

• Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini: A long chat lets it hold your world facts and flag any new idea that clashes with them.

Functions and deliverables

• Anthropologist: Design a believable culture for your story or game, or check one for clichés. Get kinship, rituals, beliefs and tensions that fit together.
  • A culture sheet covering food and trade, family and power, beliefs and rituals, identity and inner tensions
  • A fit check for each custom, with what it does, red flags and a keep, change or rethink call
  • A list of clichés and shallow borrowing, with a deeper option for each
  • Real-world parallels to read up on, marked to check
  • A stress test showing how the culture copes with a crisis
  Source: Michael Sitarzewski and Agency Agents contributors.
• Research paper and code note writer: Share a paper, repo or messy notes. Get claims, methods and evidence sorted into a clear research folder.
  • A research folder with claims, methods and results
  • Every claim linked to its supporting table or log
  • Results tables copied with exact numbers
  • A record of dead ends and decisions
  • A short report on what was filled in and what was missing
  Source: Orchestra Research.

Tasks you can use it for

• You are building a society for a novel, game or tabletop campaign, and its customs feel pasted together.
• You borrowed from real cultures and want to know whether the result reads as shallow or as a stereotype.
• You must decide how a family rule, such as who inherits or who marries whom, would change your plot.
• You added a new ritual or law and want to see whether it clashes with the rest of the culture.

Limits to check before starting

• You need fieldwork, a study design or an ethics review for real research. Work with a qualified anthropologist.
• You want to check land, climate and trade routes. Use the Geography analyst or the Fictional world logic reviewer.
• You want to check dates, technology and daily life of a real period. Use the Historian agent for period accuracy.
• You want story structure or what a character wants. Use the Narrative analyst or the Game narrative designer.

Best way to use this role

Give it one clear outcome, the actual files and a definition of done. Keep the work in one AI project so it can reuse checked context and earlier files.

• Download the pack from this page and add it to your AI as a skill. If you cannot, paste SKILL.md into a new chat, then paste references/source-agent.md after it.
• Describe your world, how this society feeds itself and what is fixed. Say if you want to design, check or stress test.
• Type "Design a culture for this setting", "Check these customs for fit and clichés" or "Stress test this culture with a long drought".
• Read the red flags and the tensions first. Change your world where the logic fails, then ask it to check again.
• If you base a culture on a living people, check the real-world parallels in books and with people from that culture. The AI works from general knowledge and cannot look anything up.

Read it as data

Read the complete role setup as JSON. Connect your AI to the AI Blocks MCP library and read aiblocks://roles/academic-anthropologist for its role instructions and pinned sources.

This is a prepared AI role. No task has run. Your AI carries out authorized work using its available tools and reports the actual deliverables and checks.