brainstorm

A structured brainstorming guide for turning a question into options, testing assumptions, comparing choices, and selecting next steps.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explore product ideas, technical approaches, experiments, content angles, names, strategies, or other decisions.
Why use it?
It helps prevent vague idea lists and makes tradeoffs, risks, and unnecessary complexity visible before a decision is made.

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/codeaholicguy/ai-devkit/brainstorm
Any agent
npx skills add codeaholicguy/ai-devkit --skill brainstorm
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/codeaholicguy/ai-devkit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 59 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 409 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 $0.00059 $0.00409
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00204
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00082
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00041

Measured 2d ago against content hash 0d565c3544e9, 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 2d 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/brainstorm/SKILL.md · 30 lines

What it actually says

Brainstorm

Run a compact diverge-to-converge loop.

Workflow

  1. Frame: goal, constraints, audience, success criteria, assumptions.
  2. Baseline: state the simplest honest solution first. Every option must beat it; the baseline stays a candidate.
  3. Diverge: distinct options across practical, high-leverage, and unusual angles.
  4. Challenge: weak assumptions, failure modes, tradeoffs, rejections. Always: reject speculative generality (each abstraction, layer, flag, and data copy needs a current caller) and verify load-bearing "needed" claims in the consuming code, not doc assertions.
  5. Compare: only relevant criteria, plus deletion cost (how easily the option can be removed later). Ties go to the smaller option.
  6. Converge: strongest 3 picks with rationale and a next step. Self-review first: for each new constant, object, layer, and flag ask "why do we need this?" Cut answers that are only messaging or future-proofing.

Formats

Use Quick by default. Use Deep only for ambiguous or high-stakes decisions. Ask at most one clarifying question only if missing context would materially change the brainstorm; otherwise state assumptions and proceed.

  • Quick: clusters, challenges, 3 picks.
  • Deep: assumptions, clusters, evaluation table, recommendation.
  • Naming: tone groups, fit, ambiguity, pronunciation.
  • Technical: approaches, tradeoffs, risks, validation.
  • Content: angles, hooks, audiences, outlines.

Avoid filler, near-duplicates, generic best practices, premature recommendations, and scope without a current caller. If asked for more ideas, explore a new axis before listing variants.

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. 2d ago First seen · 30 lines · 59 tokens per session scan A 0d565c3544e9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

brainstorm is a skill published in the GitHub repository codeaholicguy/ai-devkit (1,601 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 59 tokens to every session and 409 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

tmux

Remote-control tmux sessions for interactive CLIs by sending keystrokes and scraping pane output.

HKUDS/nanobot · 22 tokens

summarize

Summarize or extract text/transcripts from URLs, podcasts, and local files (great fallback for “transcribe this YouTube/video”).

HKUDS/nanobot · 32 tokens

foundry-config-setup

Resolve missing setup caused by a hardcoded Foundry project endpoint or model in a sample. Use when a sample fails because it uses a placeholder/hardcoded projectendpoint (for example "https://your-project.services.ai.azure.com") or a hardcoded model instead of reading them from the environment.

microsoft/agent-framework · 65 tokens

complete-partial-pr

Evaluate and complete an issue or PR where the submitted patch fixes only a narrow symptom of the reported pain point. Use when a contribution may miss adjacent integration surfaces, provider/spec semantics, roundtrip behavior, tests, docs, or historical maintainer decisions.

pydantic/pydantic-ai · 55 tokens

hive.chart-creation-foundations

Required reading whenever any chart tool is available. Teaches the one-tool embedding contract (call chartrender → live chart appears in chat AND a downloadable PNG lands in the queen session dir), the ECharts (data viz) vs Mermaid (structural diagrams) decision, the BI/financial-grade aesthetic baseline (no…

aden-hive/hive · 133 tokens

peon-ping-log

Log exercise reps for the Peon Trainer. Use when user says they did pushups, squats, or wants to log reps. Examples - "/peon-ping-log 25 pushups", "/peon-ping-log 30 squats", "log 50 pushups".

PeonPing/peon-ping · 64 tokens