The AI Ikigai Coach skill for Claude

The AI Ikigai Coach is one of the 100 free skills in the TheSEO skill library . A skill is an instruction file, SKILL.md, that gives an AI assistant a fixed way of working for one task. Not software you install, not a subscription, not a connection to anything else: one text file of 2,259 words that tells Claude which questions to ask, what to do with a vague answer, what the final report looks like and what it may never fill in itself. New to this and want to know what such a file actually is, read what Claude skills are.

The problem the skill solves is an old problem in a new form. You are unsure about your direction, you talk about it with friends, and every conversation ends in the same loose words: something with people, something with freedom, starting something of my own. Those words are no use to you on Monday morning. What is missing is not inspiration but a push towards concreteness, and that is exactly what the file enforces. The coach keeps digging per circle until there are at least five concrete answers, and on an answer such as helping people it does not move on before there is an action, an audience and a context.

It was originally written for career choices, for freelancers looking for a niche, for rethinking a service offer, for choosing a course of study and for the question of what you want from the second half of your working life. The description in the file also names the complaints it responds to, and those are more recognisable than the tidy question: I earn well but I drag myself to work, I do what I love but nobody pays for it, I am good at this work and that is exactly why I cannot get out of it, I do a bit of everything and nothing properly, I have six ideas and dare not choose one.

Two things to know in advance. The first is that the skill does not deliver a life calling but a direction with a next step attached. The second is that it is honest about where the model comes from, and that is rarer than it sounds: the four circle diagram you see everywhere is not ancient Japanese wisdom. How that works is further down in DOC.04, and it is in the file itself as well.

Anyone stuck on the question of what they want usually looks for the cause in themselves: not enough nerve, not enough self knowledge, started too late. Ikigai puts the cause somewhere else, and that is the most useful reversal in the whole file. The problem is rarely an empty talent circle. What you have is an empty overlap, and those two are not the same thing.

The circles get filled in separately. You can make an impressive list of what you can do, a second of what you enjoy and a third of what the world needs, and still be no wiser. Value only appears where two lists touch. Which is why the skill reads the overlaps rather than the circles, and says explicitly which overlap stays empty.

The answers stay abstract. Something with sustainability is not an answer, it is a category. Abstractions get refused, and it keeps digging until there is an action, an audience and a context. That feels awkward and it is the reason something usable comes out at the end.

The centre point becomes the goal. In nearly every popular explanation your ikigai is the little spot in the middle where all four circles meet. The SKILL.md says something else, and that is the most important choice of substance in it: in practice the overlaps between two circles are more useful than the centre point. Chase the centre point and you are looking for a job that may not exist. Read the overlaps and you see straight away which of the four is your problem.

The payment circle gets skipped. When assessing existing work the file mentions it almost in passing: the payment circle is usually the thinnest. That explains a great deal. The mission is often clear and so is the passion, but nobody has thought about who would pay and why. In the worked example that is exactly the outcome: the empty spot was not in the talent but in who pays.

No test follows. A conclusion without a check stays a feeling. And so every session ends with an experiment that can be finished within thirty days, with something to measure and with the outcome that would either confirm the direction or knock it down. In diff form, with lines from the example in the skill: what goes out and what comes back in its place.

A skill is only as good as its instructions, so we simply describe them here. The file opens with frontmatter: name ai-ikigai-coach, version 1.0.0, licence MIT, and a long description that determines when Claude picks the skill up. It contains not only the tidy search terms such as ikigai, four circles, find my niche and what to study, but also the complaints from DOC.01. Say something like that to Claude while the skill is loaded and it switches over by itself.

Then comes the theory, and it is shorter and more honest than you are used to from a coaching model. Ikigai is a Japanese word for the thing that makes your life worth living, and in Japan it is not a career model. It is just as much about getting up for your garden, your grandchild or your morning walk. The psychiatrist Mieko Kamiya wrote the book about it in 1966 that counts in Japan as the standard work. The four circle diagram is a later Western addition, and the file prescribes that you are honest about that if somebody asks.

The core is a run of seven fixed actions. It asks the four questions one at a time, not as a list all at once, and keeps digging per circle until there are at least five concrete answers. It refuses abstractions. It fills in nothing itself and never invents talents or interests you have not named. It looks for the overlaps and says which is strong and which stays empty.

It points at one direction with the reasoning and names the two strongest alternatives so the choice stays visible. It tests that direction for feasibility: how much time, money and risk it costs, and what goes wrong if it does not work. And it closes with an experiment that can be finished within thirty days.

Before the questioning round starts the skill runs through a short input checklist, and it only asks for what is missing: your life stage roughly, your current situation, your financial floor as an order of magnitude, the time you can free up per week to experiment, what is not up for discussion such as where you live, family or a course you are in the middle of, and what you have already tried and why it did not work out. That last point saves the most time, because it stops you being given advice you already ruled out last year.

A striking number of rules are about language. The file forbids itself dashes in running text, empty superlatives and floaty words such as flow, the universe, manifesting and higher calling. It prescribes addressing the reader directly, concrete over abstract, a figure over an adjective, and short sentences alternating with long ones. It even says that not every list may have exactly three items, to stop it sounding like AI. To write such a file yourself, you will find its full structure set out in our explanation of writing a SKILL.md.

Finally the skill has a separate review mode. Hand it a filled in ikigai diagram, a positioning document or a career plan and you get five things back: a concreteness test that marks every answer that is too abstract with the follow up question attached, a circle balance that shows which circle is overfull and which is empty, an overlap check that works out whether the chosen direction really sits in an overlap or is quietly one circle, a reality test against the time, money and obligations named, and a rewritten direction in one sentence plus a thirty day test.

In countless places the four circle diagram is sold as ancient Japanese wisdom. That is not true, and the file says so itself in two separate passages: one in the theory and one in the list of things the skill never does. None of that is a detail. Use a model under an invented origin and you cannot really draw an honest conclusion from it either.

The word comes from Japan, the diagram does not. Ikigai is often translated as the thing that makes your life worth living, and there it is not a career model. Mieko Kamiya, a psychiatrist, wrote Ikigai ni tsuite in 1966, which counts in Japan as the standard work on the concept. Since then ikigai has been studied widely in Japanese psychology and elderly care, among other things in connection with wellbeing at a great age.

The diagram is Western and young. It goes back to a purpose diagram by Andrés Zuzunaga, which Marc Winn combined with the word ikigai around 2014. Which is how the picture you now see everywhere came about. The file calls the diagram a perfectly good thinking tool and says in the same breath that it is not ancient Japanese wisdom. That combination is exactly what makes it usable.

Two variants are ready in the file. The first is Ken Mogi's five pillars, among them starting small and releasing yourself. It brings that in when somebody is stuck on the idea that the answer has to be grand and final. The second is job crafting by Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton, described in Academy of Management Review in 2001, meant for anyone who cannot or does not want to leave their current job: you then look for tasks you can shift within your existing role instead of for a new role.

The source list has five entries and they are not there for decoration. Kamiya from 1966, The Little Book of Ikigai by Ken Mogi from 2017, the well known Ikigai by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles from 2016, the attribution of the four circle diagram to Marc Winn and Andrés Zuzunaga, and Wrzesniewski and Dutton for job crafting. You can read them and decide for yourself whether you agree, and that is more than most coaching models allow you.

Even without installing the skill you can get somewhere with these principles: keep digging until your answer contains an action, an audience and a context, read the overlaps instead of the circles, and put a thirty day test behind it. If the direction is already clear and the sticking point is doing something with it every day, the AI Atomic Habits Coach takes over there. For anyone who would rather think from their why than from four circles, the Golden Circle Coach skill is a more logical starting point.

The zip contains one folder, ai-ikigai-coach, with the SKILL.md in it. Installing is a matter of putting the file in the right place, and that place differs per environment. SKILL.md has been an open standard since December 2025, so the same skill also works in Codex, Cursor and Gemini CLI. You are not downloading a Claude file but a working instruction any modern AI assistant can read.

After that, using it is simple: start with your situation in plain language and let the skill ask the questions. Set aside an hour and answer the follow up questions seriously, because the quality of the report depends entirely on how concrete your answers are. Should you get stuck on the installation, the step by step explanation is in installing Claude skills. More background on working with AI is in the knowledge base.

Six different situations are described in the file, each with its own approach, and that is more useful than general advice. The full four circle round is meant for an open question about direction, for people who have time to think. A shortened round with only the talent and payment circles is meant for business owners who want to sharpen their offer: they rarely have a passion problem, they have a positioning problem.

The job crafting variant is for anyone who cannot or does not want to leave their current job, because then you look for tasks that can shift within your role. Ken Mogi's five pillars come in when somebody is stuck on the thought that the answer has to be grand and final, because starting small is the treatment then.

Two situations get an explicit weighting. For a choice of study the skill puts more weight on the talent and enjoyment circles and deliberately keeps the payment circle wide, with a reason that holds: an eighteen year old trying to predict the labour market of 2040 is choosing on the wrong ground. For people over fifty the transferability of experience weighs more heavily than curiosity about something entirely new.

There are also moments to leave it alone. If you are mainly describing burnout, depression or an acute financial crisis, this is not a question about meaning but a request for help or for an emergency plan, and that is in the description of the file in those words. It then stops and refers you on. A pure market analysis with no personal component falls outside it too: there is nothing to fill the four circles with and you are better off starting with a strategy model.

And the most honest limit: the skill makes your choice sharper, not easier. The direction that comes out is a hypothesis with a test under it, not a guarantee. If that thirty day test comes to nothing, according to the file that does not mean the idea is bad but that your offer or your audience is wrong. Keeping that difference in view is work you have to do yourself. If you then want to hang concrete goals on the direction, the SMART Goals Coach skill follows on from it, and for the gap between intention and behaviour there is the WOOP Method Coach skill.

If the four circles produce an offer you want to sell yourself, the next piece of work starts there: being found by the people who are waiting for it. That is the trade this institute exists for. To find out where your own visibility stands right now, the free SEO scan gives a first picture in seconds. And if you want to talk about what AI can do for your work beyond this, from separate skills to a brain that remembers everything, we simply do that in a conversation.