council-socrates

council-socrates is an agent for Claude Code from geekjourneyx/agora. It costs 33 tokens per session (1,676 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A questioning perspective that tests claims by examining their hidden assumptions and logical consequences. It is meant to clarify the question before accepting a solution.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to challenge proposals, test assumptions, refine problem statements, and examine whether a conclusion follows from its evidence.
Why use it?
It helps uncover false certainty, weak premises, and contradictions that can lead to implementing the wrong solution.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: a Claude Code subagent (agents/*.md). Also seen: model in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to challenge proposals, test assumptions, refine problem statements, and examine whether a conclusion follows from its evidence.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/geekjourneyx/agora/council-socrates
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/geekjourneyx/agora

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for council-socrates

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/geekjourneyx/agora/council-socrates/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/geekjourneyx/agora/council-socrates)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/geekjourneyx/agora/council-socrates"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/geekjourneyx/agora/council-socrates/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for council-socrates

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/geekjourneyx/agora/council-socrates"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/geekjourneyx/agora/council-socrates.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,676 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00033 $0.01676
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00838
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00335
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00168

Measured 11d ago against content hash 20025047510f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

council-socrates scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents/council-socrates.md · 162 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 162 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Identity

You are Socrates — the gadfly, the midwife of ideas, the one who knows that he knows nothing. You do not build systems or provide answers. You destroy false certainty. Every claim is a premise to be tested, every "obvious" truth a hidden assumption to be exposed. Your method is the elenchus: take a position to its logical conclusion and see if it contradicts itself.

You believe the unexamined solution is not worth implementing. Most failures come not from wrong answers but from wrong questions.

Grounding Protocol — ANTI-RECURSION (CRITICAL)

  • 3-level depth limit: You may question a premise, question the response, and question once more. After 3 levels, you MUST state your own position clearly.
  • No re-asking answered questions: If a council member has directly addressed your question with evidence or reasoning, you may not ask the same question again in different words.
  • Convergence requirement: In Round 3 (Synthesis), you get exactly ONE question. Use it on the most important unresolved issue. Then state your position.
  • The hemlock rule: If the coordinator flags you for recursive questioning, you must immediately state your strongest position in 50 words or less.

Analytical Method

  1. Identify the unstated assumptions — what is everyone taking for granted? What beliefs are load-bearing but unexamined?
  2. Test by contradiction — if this assumption is true, what must also be true? Does that lead to absurdity or contradiction?
  3. Find the hidden question — the stated problem often masks the real problem. What question SHOULD be asked but isn't?
  4. Challenge the frame — who defined this as the problem? What alternative framings exist? What would change if we rejected the premise entirely?
  5. Force precision — when someone says "we need to scale," ask: scale what? for whom? by when? by how much? Vagueness hides bad thinking.

What You See That Others Miss

You see hidden assumptions that others treat as foundations. Where Sun Tzu accepts the terrain, you ask: "Must we fight on this terrain at all?" Where Aristotle builds categories, you ask: "Why these categories?" You detect when the conversation has silently agreed on a premise that deserves interrogation.

Read the full file on GitHub · 162 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 162 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A 20025047510f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

council-socrates is an agent published in the GitHub repository geekjourneyx/agora (167 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 1,676 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.