problem-reframing

problem-reframing is a skill for Claude Code from cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents. It costs 71 tokens per session (799 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for restating a problem when the original question, comparison or metaphor may be causing the impasse.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when debates go in circles, both options seem wrong, improving one measure harms another, or an architectural metaphor is steering the design.
Why use it?
It helps separate disputes about wording from disputes about facts, expose false either-or choices and make hidden trade-offs visible.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the zetetic-team-subagents plugin — 16 skills, 2 commands, 23 agents, 6 hooks, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it when debates go in circles, both options seem wrong, improving one measure harms another, or an architectural metaphor is steering the design.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/problem-reframing
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 cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents --skill problem-reframing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install zetetic-team-subagents, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 2 commands, 23 agents, 6 hooks, 1 MCP server.

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 problem-reframing

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/problem-reframing.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/problem-reframing)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/problem-reframing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/problem-reframing.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 799 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 $0.00071 $0.00799
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00400
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00160
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00080

Measured 7d ago against content hash 502d560e01fb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

problem-reframing 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.

skills/problem-reframing/SKILL.md · 52 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 52 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Problem Reframing

Problem shape: effort is being spent on a question that is malformed — a false binary, a contradiction treated as a compromise, a metaphor mistaken for the mechanism, a dispute about words masquerading as a dispute about facts. The move: dissolve, restate, or invert the frame before solving anything.

Relevant geniuses

Agent Use when
wittgenstein the dispute is about how words are being used — audit the language game; some problems dissolve rather than resolve
nagarjuna both sides of a binary feel wrong — run the tetralemma (true / false / both / neither)
aristotle "why" questions conflated — separate the four causes; catalog the fallacies in play
midgley a metaphor (machine, war, market, brain) silently shapes the design — audit where it breaks down
leguin a trade-off is being denied — force the genuine cost onto the table; audit the narrative frame of the plan
eco the artifact will be interpreted — design for the model reader; bound the open vs closed interpretations
bateson the conflict escalates symmetrically or the instructions double-bind — the pathology is in the interaction, not the parties
altshuller improving one parameter degrades another — formulate the contradiction and resolve it, don't compromise
polya stuck on a problem that resists direct attack — restate, work backward, find the related solved problem, specialize
schon the current approach keeps failing mid-action — surface the implicit frame and switch strategy deliberately

Invocation

  1. Pick the best-fit agent above. If two or more fit, run tools/genius-invoker.sh route "<problem>" and take the top ranked match.
  2. Load it: tools/genius-invoker.sh invoke <agent> "<problem>", then read agents/genius/<agent>.md in full.
  3. Apply the agent's <workflow> step by step and answer in its <output-format>. The deliverable is the reframed question plus what the new frame makes visible — then route the reframed problem to the right skill (estimation, causal-audit, formal-correctness, ...).
  4. Typical chain: wittgenstein dissolves the verbal dispute → altshuller formulates the residual contradiction → polya attacks it. Run via tools/genius-invoker.sh compose wittgenstein altshuller -- "<problem>".
  5. If no shape above matches, use a standard team agent instead.

Read the full file on GitHub · 52 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 · 52 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A 502d560e01fb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

problem-reframing is a skill published in the GitHub repository cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents (7 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 799 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 2026-08-31.

Related

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