idea-refine

idea-refine is a skill for Claude Code from addyosmani/agent-skills. It costs 75 tokens per session (1,847 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured way to turn a rough software idea into a clear concept worth building. It first explores alternatives and assumptions, then narrows them into a concrete one-page plan.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explore an idea, compare possible approaches, stress-test a plan, and produce a written problem statement, recommended direction, scope, and list of exclusions.
Why use it?
It helps expose unclear goals and risky assumptions before development begins. This makes it easier to choose a direction and define what belongs in the first version.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: $ARGUMENTS substitution. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the agent-skills plugin — 25 skills, 10 commands, 4 agents, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to explore an idea, compare possible approaches, stress-test a plan, and produce a written problem statement, recommended direction, scope, and list of exclusions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/addyosmani/agent-skills/idea-refine
About the project

addyosmani/agent-skills is a collection of reusable workflows, quality checks, commands, and other instructions that guide AI coding agents through software development. It is for developers who want agents to follow consistent engineering practices, and the catalogue entries are its packaged skills, commands, agents, plugins, instructions, and hooks.

addyosmani/agent-skills · 93,102 stars · on GitHub · skills.addy.ie

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.

Any agent
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --skill idea-refine
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agent-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 25 skills, 10 commands, 4 agents, 1 hook.

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 idea-refine

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/addyosmani/agent-skills/idea-refine/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/addyosmani/agent-skills/idea-refine)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/addyosmani/agent-skills/idea-refine"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/addyosmani/agent-skills/idea-refine/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 idea-refine

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/addyosmani/agent-skills/idea-refine"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/addyosmani/agent-skills/idea-refine.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,847 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. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 14 May 2026
  • Snyk pass 14 May 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00075 $0.01847
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00924
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00369
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00185

Measured 10d ago against content hash 79e773058963, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

idea-refine 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 10d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/idea-refine.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/idea-refine/SKILL.md · 179 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 179 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Idea Refine

Refines raw ideas into sharp, actionable concepts worth building through structured divergent and convergent thinking.

How It Works

  1. Understand & Expand (Divergent): Restate the idea, ask sharpening questions, and generate variations.
  2. Evaluate & Converge: Cluster ideas, stress-test them, and surface hidden assumptions.
  3. Sharpen & Ship: Produce a concrete markdown one-pager moving work forward.

Usage

This skill is primarily an interactive dialogue. Invoke it with an idea, and the agent will guide you through the process.

# Optional: Initialize the ideas directory
bash skills/idea-refine/scripts/idea-refine.sh

Trigger Phrases:

  • "Help me refine this idea"
  • "Ideate on [concept]"
  • "Stress-test my plan"

Output

The final output is a markdown one-pager saved to docs/ideas/[idea-name].md (after user confirmation), containing:

  • Problem Statement
  • Recommended Direction
  • Key Assumptions
  • MVP Scope
  • Not Doing list

Detailed Instructions

You are an ideation partner. Your job is to help refine raw ideas into sharp, actionable concepts worth building.

Philosophy

  • Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Push toward the simplest version that still solves the real problem.
  • Start with the user experience, work backwards to technology.
  • Say no to 1,000 things. Focus beats breadth.
  • Challenge every assumption. "How it's usually done" is not a reason.
  • Show people the future — don't just give them better horses.
  • The parts you can't see should be as beautiful as the parts you can.

Process

When the user invokes this skill with an idea ($ARGUMENTS), guide them through three phases. Adapt your approach based on what they say — this is a conversation, not a template.

Phase 1: Understand & Expand (Divergent)

Goal: Take the raw idea and open it up.

  1. Restate the idea as a crisp "How Might We" problem statement. This forces clarity on what's actually being solved.

  2. Ask 3-5 sharpening questions — no more. Focus on:

    • Who is this for, specifically?
    • What does success look like?
    • What are the real constraints (time, tech, resources)?
    • What's been tried before?
    • Why now?

Read the full file on GitHub · 179 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 10d ago First seen · 179 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A 79e773058963

Subscribe to this mod's changes

idea-refine is a skill published in the GitHub repository addyosmani/agent-skills (93,102 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 1,847 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.

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