brainstorm

A planning guide that creates exactly three different implementation approaches before coding. It compares their complexity, risk, reversibility, testing needs, and fit with the existing project.

In plain words
What is it for?
Brainstorming solutions, comparing implementation options, resolving design decisions, and choosing an approach before starting development.
Why use it?
It makes important design choices visible before code is written and helps avoid committing to an unnecessarily complex or risky approach.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aksoftcode/aicrew/brainstorm
Any agent
npx skills add AKSoftCode/aicrew --skill brainstorm
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AKSoftCode/aicrew

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 381 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00024 $0.00381
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00191
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00076
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00038

Measured yesterday against content hash a5769bce8c61, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

brainstorm 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 yesterday.

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.

codex-skills/brainstorm/SKILL.md · 67 lines

What it actually says

Brainstorm (Codex)

Use this skill when the user asks to brainstorm, compare approaches, or resolve design decisions before implementation.

Default output

Caveman/lean style by default. See ~/Agents/agents/caveman.md and ~/Agents/agents/context-economy.md. /normal or /lean off restores verbose.

Lookup order

Before generating options, check for project-specific guidance in this order:

  1. .ai/skills/agents/brainstorm.md
  2. AGENTS.md
  3. ~/Agents/agents/brainstorm.md

If a project override exists, follow it. If not, use the default workflow below.

Default workflow

  1. Restate the problem in one sentence.
  2. Identify the key decisions that must be resolved before coding.
  3. Generate exactly 3 materially different options.
  4. For each option, evaluate:
    • Complexity
    • Risk
    • Reversibility
    • Test surface
    • Prior art in the codebase
  5. Recommend one option with a short rationale.
  6. Ask the user to choose or modify an option before proceeding.

Guardrails

  • Do not invent domain rules, contracts, or constraints.
  • Tie non-obvious claims to code or docs when possible.
  • Prefer the smallest, most testable, most reversible option.
  • Flag options that weaken validation, auditability, or traceability.

Output format

BRAINSTORM:

Problem statement:

DECISIONS TO RESOLVE BEFORE CODING:
1. ...
2. ...
3. ...

OPTION A — ...
OPTION B — ...
OPTION C — ...

RECOMMENDATION:

OPEN QUESTIONS:
- ...
Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. yesterday First seen · 67 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A a5769bce8c61

Subscribe to this mod's changes

brainstorm is a skill published in the GitHub repository AKSoftCode/aicrew (3 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 381 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-31.

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