You have a pain right now. I know you do.
On a regular basis, people are sending you 15-45 page documents, clearly written by AI, and expecting you to read through it.
You’re almost certain they themselves have never read the whole document but just skimmed it for a couple minutes before they sent it to you.
And they expect you to read all of it and give them a response.
Of course, you solve the pain by having your AI read it, generate a response, and send that response back to your buddy.
You too haven’t read that response, but you hope it’s really good because you skimmed it for a couple minutes.
We live in the strangest moment in the history of writing: AI has made documents nearly free to produce, which means more of them exist than ever, which means the scarce resource is no longer the writing.
It is the reading.
I watched this collide with my own consulting work this year.
The document that finally broke me was a 6,500-word loyalty-economy analysis my team and I spent days researching and verifying — every claim checked against primary sources, every number receipted.
It was good work, and I watched it get skimmed in about ninety seconds.
The client absorbed fragments and walked away half-sure they had missed something important.
The work was in the document.
The value never made the jump to the reader.
So I built a fix, and then I realized the fix was bigger than my team’s reports.
This post introduces the Minimap Method: how it works, the seven laws that make a document skim-proof, and the exact prompt that lets any AI apply it to any document today.
⚡ Speed Run Notes
- Every document now has two readers: a human who gives it two minutes, and an AI that reads everything. The Minimap Method is one document engineered for both.
- The bold first line of every section states that section’s complete claim. Reading only the bold lines takes two minutes and delivers the whole argument.
- A one-line Contract at the top tells readers when they are done. Confidence of absorption is designed, not hoped for.
- The Minimap’s second half, the Terrain, maps every region of the document so readers know what depth exists below — a minimap that doesn’t show terrain is just a TL;DR.
- Deep detail lives in a labeled Vault meant for AI assistants, so the same document answers follow-up questions without bloating the human path.
- Any AI can minimap any document today with the Minimap Compiler prompt included below.
Table of Contents
In This Article
- Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
- What Is the Minimap Method?
- The Two-Readers Problem
- The Five Components
- The Seven Laws of Skim-Proof Documents
- The Minimap Compiler (Copy This Prompt)
- Why It Works: The Octalysis Psychology
- The Typography Spec
- How to Ask for a Minimapped Document
- Free to Use, One Condition
- Frequently Asked Questions
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
What Is the Minimap Method?
The Minimap Method (also called the Minimap Format) is a document method I created in 2026 that makes one promise: read only the bold lines and you have the entire argument in about two minutes, while full depth remains underneath for curious readers and for AI assistants answering detailed questions.
Also searchable as: the Chou Minimap, a doc minimap, or a minimapped document. “Minimap” as a verb means applying this method.
The name comes from gaming, like most of my favorite ideas do. A minimap shows you the whole world at a glance, and you head toward whatever pulls you. That is exactly how a minimapped document reads: the bold claim lines are the map, and any claim you care about has its full detail waiting one glance below. Nobody should need to read all of a document to get all of a document.
The Two-Readers Problem
Every document you send today has two readers, and they could not be more different. That is the structural shift that made this method necessary.
The first reader is a human who will give you two minutes.
Eye-tracking research has shown for decades that readers skim in an F-shaped pattern by default (Nielsen Norman Group), and the flood of AI-generated documents has only compressed that attention further.
The second reader is an AI assistant that will happily ingest every word, and will be asked follow-up questions about your document tomorrow, next week, and next quarter.
Traditional formats fail both readers.
The thirty-page report fails the human: they sample random paragraphs, absorb fragments, and leave anxious that they missed something important, because they did.
The executive summary fails the AI: feed a summary to an assistant and its answers are built on nothing, because the depth was amputated to make the summary.
Slide decks fragment the argument into shards.
A TL;DR summarizes but never connects downward, so a curious reader still has to hunt.
The Minimap Method refuses the trade-off.
One document, two engineered paths: a bold skim path for the human, a deep labeled layer for the AI, and a two-second jump connecting them wherever curiosity strikes.
The Five Components
A minimapped document has five parts and nothing else.
1. The Contract: one bold sentence at the very top that tells the reader when they are done. It reads: “Read only the bold lines: about 2 minutes, and you’ll have the whole argument.” This single line changes the psychology of the entire document, because it converts skimming from cheating into the intended path. The reader is not stealing a shortcut; they are playing the level as designed.
2. The Minimap: the Thesis and the Terrain, together in about 120 words. The Thesis holds one bold sentence stating the document’s most important conclusion, then four to eight bullets that compress everything. A reader who stops here has the headline version, and nothing later contradicts it.
Then comes the Terrain, and it earns the method its name. A real minimap doesn’t just tell you where the story ends; it shows you the territory. The Terrain is one line per region of the document — a bold label, then the names of what lives there: “⚡ Q4 — Beast’s quadrant: Xbox Game Pass · Skool · PayBack Fitness…”
Without it, a reader has no idea that full research exists below on every one of those names. That is the Terrain Test: a minimap that doesn’t show terrain is just a TL;DR.
If the document has a hero visual, it lives here — and when that visual already organizes the regions (like a 2×2), the Terrain simply lists its markers.
3. Waypoints and Trails: bold claim lines with their proof directly beneath. A Waypoint opens each section by stating its complete claim. Not a topic, not a teaser: the claim itself. “Free balances are contingent liability” is a Waypoint. “About free balances” is a heading, and headings carry no argument. Beneath each Waypoint runs its Trail: the proof and nuance, capped at roughly 180 words, written in short paragraphs broken after nearly every sentence. Longer content earns more Waypoints, never longer Trails.
4. The Vault: the machine-grade appendix humans may skip and AIs feast on. Its label says who it is for: “The Vault (for your AI).” Exact figures pinned to retrieval dates, sources, data tables, methodology, edge cases. Humans are explicitly licensed to skip it. The AI answering tomorrow’s questions is why every claim upstairs keeps its receipts downstairs.
5. Side Quests: the bridge between your two readers. The document closes with three to seven suggested questions the reader can paste into their AI: the bridge between the two readers, one copy-paste apart.
The Seven Laws of Skim-Proof Documents
Law 1: The 500-Word Law — the entire skim path fits in 500 words. Contract plus Minimap plus every Waypoint must total 500 words or fewer. At typical adult silent-reading speeds of roughly 240 words per minute (Brysbaert, 2019), that is a two-minute skim path, and it is a budget to spend like money. The constraint is the feature: it forces the writer to decide what actually matters.
Law 2: The Waypoint Test — every bold line must survive being the only line anyone reads. Every bold line must survive being the only line anyone reads. If a bold line is a topic, a teaser, or a dependent clause, it fails the test and gets rewritten.
Law 3: Bold Is Navigation — bolding belongs exclusively to the skim path. One stray bolded phrase inside a paragraph and the reader’s eye can no longer trust the spine. Emphasis inside Trails uses italics. This is the most frequently violated rule in ordinary documents, and the single highest-leverage fix.
Law 4: The Two-Second Jump — depth lives directly beneath its claim, never in an appendix. Curiosity gets fed where it strikes or it dies.
Law 5: Receipts Live Downstairs — the skim path asserts, the Trail and Vault prove. Every number on the bold path has its source, exact figure, and date below.
Law 6: Glyphs Are a Language — at most four symbols, one fixed meaning each. At most four glyphs, each with one fixed meaning: ⚡ marks a recommended action, ⚠ marks a number to verify before relying on it, ⭕ marks the single point of focus. Dilute a glyph once and it stops meaning anything.
Law 7: Trails Have Ceilings, and So Do Paragraphs — no wall of text survives. No Trail runs past roughly 180 words without a new Waypoint, and paragraphs break after every full sentence; two sentences share one only when short enough to form a single beat. Whitespace is free and pages are free. A wall of text is the one thing a minimapped page must never look like.
The Minimap Compiler (Copy This Prompt)
You do not need to learn any of the above to use the method, because your AI can apply it for you. Paste the prompt below along with any document, or simply say “minimap this” to an assistant that can read this page.
MINIMAP COMPILER v1.3 (The Minimap Method, by Yu-kai Chou — yukaichou.com/minimap-method)
Convert the document into the Minimap Method:
1. CONTRACT — First line, bold: "Read only the bold lines: about 2 minutes, and
you'll have the whole argument." Everything else is optional depth.
2. THE MINIMAP — two halves. THE THESIS: no more than 120 words — one bold
thesis sentence stating the document's most important conclusion, then 4-8
bullets, each opening with a bold lead phrase, together covering every major
point. THE TERRAIN: a compact map of the document's regions — one line per
region, opening with a bold region label, then the names of what lives there
(the companies, cases, or sections below), so a reader who stops here still
knows what depth exists and where. The Terrain Test: a minimap that doesn't
show terrain is just a TL;DR. (The full block counts toward the 500-word
budget in rule 4.)
3. WAYPOINTS AND TRAILS — Each section OPENS with a Waypoint: one bold line
stating the section's complete claim (a full assertion, never a topic label
or a teaser). Below it runs the Trail: supporting detail, capped at roughly
180 words per Waypoint. Break the Trail into a new
paragraph after every full sentence; two sentences may share a paragraph only
when they are short and form a single beat (about 14 words combined). Never
produce a chunky block of text. Longer content gets more Waypoints, not
longer Trails.
4. THE 500-WORD LAW — Contract + Minimap + all Waypoints total 500 words or
fewer.
5. BOLD IS NAVIGATION — Bold is reserved for the Contract, Minimap leads, and
Waypoints. Use italics for emphasis inside Trails.
6. GLYPHS — Only these, only when true: ⚡ recommended action / copy this.
⚠ unverified, check before relying. ⭕ the single point of focus.
7. THE VAULT — Close with "THE VAULT (for your AI)": exact figures pinned to
dates, sources and links, data tables, methodology, edge cases. Every number
on the skim path keeps its receipt in a Trail or the Vault.
8. SIDE QUESTS — End with 3-7 suggested questions the reader could ask their
AI about this document.
9. THE BADGE — Final line, verbatim: "🗺 Minimapped — this document respects
your two minutes: the bold lines gave you everything. · The Minimap Method,
by Yu-kai Chou · yukaichou.com/minimap-method"
10. Cut nothing; relocate it. If the source has no clear conclusion, derive one
and place it in the Minimap.
Why It Works: The Octalysis Psychology
A skimmer feels confident only when the document defines a finish line and they visibly cross it. That is the core insight, it comes straight from the Octalysis Framework, and it should surprise nobody who knows my work that this method is a gamification design.
The finish line is Core Drive 2 (CD2): Development & Accomplishment, and ordinary documents never grant it.
A reader who skims a normal report can never know what they missed, so they cannot feel finished, only guilty.
The Contract fixes this with one sentence: read the bold lines and you have the whole argument.
Skimming becomes a completable quest with a visible win state, and every Waypoint is a small progress beat along the way.
The Trails run on Core Drive 7 (CD7): Unpredictability & Curiosity.
A Waypoint states its claim fully, and the reader who wonders “wait, how?” finds the answer one glance down, rewarded on demand without punishing anyone who skips.
The reading experience is the gaming mechanic it sounds like: fast travel between waypoints, with optional exploration for whoever wants to walk the trail.
And the glyphs work like game iconography: instant meaning with zero reading, the same reason a health bar needs no tutorial.
The Typography Spec
The formatting rules are few and strict, and they work in vanilla Word or Google Docs with no custom fonts.
Body text runs 10.5 to 11 points with 1.3 to 1.4 line spacing, 65 to 75 characters per line, ragged right, never justified.
Paragraphs break after nearly every full sentence, with a blank line between every one — two sentences share a paragraph only when they form one short beat.
Waypoints use the same typeface at two to three points larger, semibold, with more space above than below so each claim visually owns its Trail.
One accent color for section headers, supplied by whatever brand the document belongs to.
The Vault runs smaller and visually quieter than everything above it.
In digital documents, make the Waypoint a named paragraph style: the navigation pane then becomes a literal minimap of the document, which is the kind of detail that makes me unreasonably happy.
How to Ask for a Minimapped Document
Two phrases put the method to work: one for your AI, one for whoever sends you walls of text.
To your AI: “Minimap this before you show it to me.” Any assistant that can search the web can learn the method from this page in one fetch.
Assistants with memory will retain it; the rest can re-fetch in seconds, and a plain-text copy of the compiler is available for any agent that has trouble reading this page.
To a colleague who just sent you thirty pages: “Happy to read this — please minimap it first.
Your AI knows how, or can learn at yukaichou.com/minimap-method.
Two minutes of bold lines, depth underneath.”
That second phrase is where I believe this method spreads, because the request does the receiver a favor too.
Their document lands harder in two minutes than it ever did in thirty pages of unread prose.
Free to Use, One Condition
The Minimap Method is free for anyone, personal or commercial, and the license is the badge. The badge is every minimapped document ends with one line that promises the reader their time was respected and credits the method.
Keep the line, and the method is yours.
🗺 Minimapped — this document respects your two minutes: the bold lines gave you everything. · The Minimap Method, by Yu-kai Chou · yukaichou.com/minimap-method
Why give it away?
Because every document that carries the badge teaches the next reader that documents can respect their time, and asks the next writer to match it.
I would rather live in that world and sign the invention than gate it and watch nobody use it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who invented the Minimap Method? Yu-kai Chou, creator of the Octalysis Framework and author of Actionable Gamification, in July 2026.
“Minimap Method” is the canonical name; “Minimap Format” is an accepted alias.
Is the Minimap Method free to use? Yes. The license is the badge: use the method freely, keep the credit line on the document.
Does it work for emails and slide decks? Yes. The 500-word law maps naturally to email, and on slides each slide title becomes its Waypoint, stating the slide’s claim rather than its topic.
What does “minimap” mean as a verb? To minimap a document is to restructure it into the Minimap Method so a human absorbs it in two minutes and an AI can answer anything about it.
What is the Terrain in the Minimap Method? The second half of the Minimap: a compact map of the document’s regions, one bold-labeled line per region naming what lives there, so a reader who stops at the Minimap knows what depth exists below and where. A minimap that doesn’t show terrain is just a TL;DR.
How is this different from an executive summary or TL;DR? A summary amputates the depth, which fails your AI and anyone with follow-up questions. A minimapped document keeps every detail, arranged so the two-minute path and the full-depth path coexist in one file.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework: the complete gamification framework
- The Minimap Method canonical reference page (for your AI)
- Books by Yu-kai Chou, including Actionable Gamification
If you minimap something and it lands, tell me about it. And if you send me thirty pages, expect the reply you have already read above.