competing-hypotheses

competing-hypotheses is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from CassioRoos/godfly-skills. It costs 114 tokens per session (999 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A decision method that compares several realistic technical approaches against the available evidence. It is based on Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, a technique for testing explanations instead of confirming the first idea.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when choosing technologies, architectures, libraries, or strategies. It helps teams compare alternatives and identify which approach best fits the constraints.
Why use it?
It reduces confirmation bias: the tendency to notice evidence supporting a preferred option while overlooking evidence against it.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it when choosing technologies, architectures, libraries, or strategies. It helps teams compare alternatives and identify which approach best fits the constraints.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cassioroos/godfly-skills/competing-hypotheses
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 CassioRoos/godfly-skills --skill competing-hypotheses
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CassioRoos/godfly-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 competing-hypotheses

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cassioroos/godfly-skills/competing-hypotheses/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cassioroos/godfly-skills/competing-hypotheses)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cassioroos/godfly-skills/competing-hypotheses"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cassioroos/godfly-skills/competing-hypotheses/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 competing-hypotheses

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cassioroos/godfly-skills/competing-hypotheses"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cassioroos/godfly-skills/competing-hypotheses.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 114 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 999 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 $0.00114 $0.00999
Opus 5 $0.00057 $0.00500
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00200
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00100

Measured today against content hash f2f0b7628af6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

competing-hypotheses 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 today.

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/competing-hypotheses/SKILL.md · 115 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Analysis of Competing Hypotheses

Don't pick the first plausible approach. Map the full solution space. Evaluate each against evidence. Find the one that best explains all the constraints.

Core Principle

The CIA developed ACH because analysts kept falling for confirmation bias -- finding evidence that supported their first hypothesis and ignoring the rest. The same happens in engineering. You think of an approach, find reasons it works, and stop looking. ACH forces you to consider ALL plausible approaches and evaluate them against ALL evidence.

When to Use

  • Choosing between architectures, frameworks, or libraries
  • When "the obvious choice" hasn't been compared to alternatives
  • When team members disagree on approach
  • When the user needs counterpoints to their proposed solution
  • When a technology bet has limited reversibility

The Process

Step 1: List All Plausible Hypotheses

Compare the genuinely credible approaches; 3-5 is a useful default, not a minimum. Two may be enough. Do not invent alternatives to fill a quota.

Rules:

  • Each must be technically credible; cite real use when available and label unproven approaches rather than inventing production precedent.
  • Include the user's proposed approach
  • Look for a materially different option the user may not have considered; include it only if credible.
  • Consider "do nothing" or "simplest possible"; explain if constraints rule it out.

Step 2: List All Evidence

Gather evidence from all available sources:

  • Requirements and constraints
  • Codebase patterns and existing architecture
  • Team capabilities and timeline
  • Performance requirements and scale targets
  • Real-world usage data from similar systems
  • Known failure modes of each approach

Step 3: Build the Diagnostic Matrix

Evidence Approach A Approach B Approach C
[constraint 1] ++ - +
[constraint 2] - ++ +
[constraint 3] + + --

Ratings: ++ strongly supports, + supports, o neutral, - contradicts, -- strongly contradicts

Read the full file on GitHub · 115 lines

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. today Changed · -1 lines f2f0b7628af6
  2. yesterday Changed · -5 lines · +6 tokens per session 82021ca751cb
  3. 10d ago First seen · 121 lines · 108 tokens per session scan A d6cd01ac6f39

Subscribe to this mod's changes

competing-hypotheses is a skill published in the GitHub repository CassioRoos/godfly-skills (1 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 114 tokens to every session and 999 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.