What is Unix philosophy small tools?

Unix philosophy small tools is a concept in personal epistemology: Complex workflows are built by combining simpler workflows. The output of one becomes the input of another. Composition is the mechanism that turns a library of small, proven workflows into an infrastructure that handles arbitrarily complex work.

Example: You need to publish a blog post. Instead of running one massive, undifferentiated process called 'publish a blog post,' you chain five independent workflows: a research workflow that produces structured notes, an outlining workflow that accepts notes and produces a hierarchical structure, a drafting workflow that accepts an outline and produces a rough manuscript, an editing workflow that accepts a rough manuscript and produces a polished document, and a publishing workflow that accepts a polished document and produces a live page. Each workflow exists independently in your library. Each has been tested and refined on its own. The publishing pipeline is not a single complex workflow — it is a composition of five simple ones, and you can swap any one of them without touching the others.

This concept is part of Phase 41 (Workflow Design) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for workflow design.