socratic

socratic is a command for Claude Code from neurofoo/agent-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (716 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided questioning method for examining a belief, decision, or idea. It moves from clarifying what is meant to testing assumptions and considering deeper implications.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to examine a claim, personal belief, important choice, or proposed idea. It produces questions and reflections across several levels of analysis.
Why use it?
It helps uncover unclear terms, unsupported assumptions, and gaps in reasoning without treating the discussion as an argument to win. This can make thinking more careful and explicit.

Command for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: $ARGUMENTS substitution.

Part of the learning-skills plugin — 3 skills, 7 commands shipped together

Good fit Use it to examine a claim, personal belief, important choice, or proposed idea. It produces questions and reflections across several levels of analysis.

Compare 6 commands from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/neurofoo/agent-skills/socratic
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/neurofoo/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install learning-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills, 7 commands.

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 socratic

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/neurofoo/agent-skills/socratic.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/neurofoo/agent-skills/socratic)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/neurofoo/agent-skills/socratic"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/neurofoo/agent-skills/socratic.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 716 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 $0.00000 $0.00716
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00358
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00143
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00072

Measured 7d ago against content hash 3c8fccc9967f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

socratic 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 7d 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.

socratic/commands/socratic.md · 135 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 135 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Socratic Questioning

Guide discovery through systematic questioning, helping examine a belief, decision, or idea more deeply.

Instructions

Work through multiple levels of questioning to explore the topic. The goal isn't to prove the person wrong—it's to help them (or yourself) think more clearly and deeply.

Output Format

Topic/Belief: [What we're examining]


Starting Point

The Claim/Position [Restate the belief or idea being examined]

Initial Questions Before diving deep, let's establish clarity:

  1. [Clarifying question about terms/definitions]
  2. [Clarifying question about scope]
  3. [Clarifying question about context]

Layer 1: Clarifying the Claim

Questions

  • What exactly do you mean by [key term]?
  • Can you give a specific example of this?
  • What would this look like in practice?

Reflections [What these questions reveal about the claim]


Layer 2: Probing Assumptions

Hidden Assumptions

Assumption Question to Test It
[assumption 1] "Is it always true that...?"
[assumption 2] "What would need to be true for...?"
[assumption 3] "Are you assuming that...?"

Questions

  • What are you taking for granted here?
  • Why do you think [X] leads to [Y]?
  • What if [assumption] weren't true?

Layer 3: Examining Evidence

Questions

  • What evidence supports this view?
  • How do you know that [claim]?
  • What would change your mind?
  • Is there any evidence against this?

Evidence Check

Claim Supporting Evidence Counterevidence
[claim] [evidence] [counter]

Layer 4: Exploring Implications

Questions

  • If this is true, what else follows?
  • What are the consequences of believing this?
  • How does this apply to [edge case]?
  • If we're wrong about this, what's the cost?

Implication Chain If [original claim] → then [implication 1] → then [implication 2]


Layer 5: Alternative Perspectives

Read the full file on GitHub · 135 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. 7d ago First seen · 135 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 3c8fccc9967f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

socratic is a command published in the GitHub repository neurofoo/agent-skills (111 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 716 tokens. 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.