What is ask-one-best-answer?

A prompting method that asks an AI to choose and explain one highest-priority recommendation instead of listing many possibilities.

Use it when you need one recommended fix, strategy, tool, or next step rather than a broad collection of ideas.

It reduces shallow option lists and gives you a focused answer that is easier to act on.

ask-one-best-answer — Skill for Claude Code by alivirgo

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 alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills --skill ask-one-best-answer

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install major-ai-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 147 skills, 8 plugins.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-one-best-answer/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-one-best-answer)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-one-best-answer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-one-best-answer/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-one-best-answer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-one-best-answer.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,077 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00021	$0.01077
Opus 5	$0.00010	$0.00539
Sonnet 5	$0.00004	$0.00215
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00108

Measured yesterday against content hash 57bf7288b59a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-one-best-answer 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.

skills/ask-one-best-answer/SKILL.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask for the One Best Answer (The 80/20 Leverage Rule) (AI Skill)

Overview

When users ask an AI for "10 ideas to grow revenue" or "5 ways to fix this performance bug," the model spreads its token budget and attention across multiple mediocre, generic suggestions.

By commanding the AI to give the single highest-conviction, highest-leverage recommendation, you force the model to rank options internally and output a deeply fleshed-out, immediately executable plan.

List Dilution vs. The Single Best Answer

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 List Dilution vs. Focus                     │
│                                                             │
│  "Give me 10 marketing ideas":                              │
│  • 10 generic, 1-sentence bullet points                     │
│  • "Start a blog", "Post on TikTok", "Host a webinar"       │
│  • Zero depth, zero execution steps, total paralysis       │
│                                                             │
│  "Give me the #1 highest-ROI marketing strategy":           │
│  • Deep execution blueprint with step-by-step tactics       │
│  • Complete conversion math, tooling, and risk mitigation   │
│  • Immediate execution readiness                            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Master "One Best Answer" Prompt Templates

Pattern 1: The High-Conviction Executive Directive

Use this for business decisions, marketing, and strategic growth:

I want to achieve [SPECIFIC GOAL] within [TIMEFRAME] with [RESOURCES / BUDGET].

Do NOT give me a list of 10 generic options.
Instead:
1. Identify the **single highest-leverage strategy** that will drive 80% of the results.
2. Defend why this specific strategy beats other alternatives.
3. Provide a step-by-step tactical execution plan for week 1.
4. Highlight the #1 fatal pitfall to avoid.

Pattern 2: The Single Root-Cause Fix (Engineering & Debugging)

Use this when troubleshooting complex production issues:

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 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.

yesterday Changed · -9 tokens per session 57bf7288b59a
7d ago First seen · 109 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A 40e11d1d0189

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-one-best-answer is a skill published in the GitHub repository alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills (1 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 1,077 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 2026-09-05.

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