unstuck

unstuck is a skill for Claude Code from coreyhaines31/makerskills. It costs 276 tokens per session (2,528 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A problem-solving guide for when a task seems impossible or you are stuck. It identifies what kind of obstacle you face and applies different ways of looking at it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to examine assumptions, restate the goal, find alternative approaches, and decide what to try next when progress has stopped.
Why use it?
It helps separate a genuinely impossible task from one that is merely expensive, restricted, unfamiliar, or badly framed.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the makerskills plugin — 21 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to examine assumptions, restate the goal, find alternative approaches, and decide what to try next when progress has stopped.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/coreyhaines31/makerskills/unstuck
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 coreyhaines31/makerskills --skill unstuck
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/coreyhaines31/makerskills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install makerskills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 21 skills.

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 unstuck

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/coreyhaines31/makerskills/unstuck/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/coreyhaines31/makerskills/unstuck)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/coreyhaines31/makerskills/unstuck"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/coreyhaines31/makerskills/unstuck/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 unstuck

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/coreyhaines31/makerskills/unstuck"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/coreyhaines31/makerskills/unstuck.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 276 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,528 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00276 $0.02528
Opus 5 $0.00138 $0.01264
Sonnet 5 $0.00055 $0.00506
Haiku 4.5 $0.00028 $0.00253

Measured 10d ago against content hash 8b6392d9e085, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

unstuck 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 10d 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/unstuck/SKILL.md · 158 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 158 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/unstuck — The roadblock antidote

Turns "impossible" into angles. Classifies the wall, runs the right lateral-thinking techniques against it, and doesn't stop at the first mediocre workaround. Output is either a set of viable angles with next actions — or an honest "this wall is load-bearing, reroute the goal."

Two modes:

  • User-invoked — someone is stuck and asks. Full 7-step workflow below.
  • Agent fast path — YOU (the agent) hit the wall mid-task. See Agent fast path — run it before telling the user something can't be done.

The mental model: walls have types, and the type picks the crowbar

"Impossible" is a claim, not a fact. It almost always decompiles into something weaker: expensive, against the rules, nobody's done it, I don't know how. Only actually impossible (physics, math, arithmetic) ends the session — and it ends it honestly.

Wall type What "impossible" actually means Lead techniques (see references/techniques.md)
Assumption An inherited belief nobody re-verified T1 assumption autopsy, T3 first principles
Framing The goal is stated in a way that excludes the answer T4 altitude shift, T2 inversion, T5 work backwards
Gatekeeper A person/org said no T10 interrogate the no, T6 analogical transfer
Tool/tech "X doesn't support Y" T9 SCAMPER (substitute the primitive), T6 analogical transfer
Resource Not enough time/money/people T7 constraint toggling, T8 provocation
Physics/math Actually impossible (rare) Honest exit — reroute the goal, the wall is load-bearing

Step 1 — Capture the wall

Get from the user (one structured message, don't round-trip):

  • The goal — what are you ultimately trying to do? (Not the blocked step — the job it serves.)
  • The wall — what exactly blocks it?
  • Attempts — what have you already tried?
  • The source of the no — who or what said no? Physics? A vendor's docs? A person? An error message? Your own assumption?
  • Stakes + deadline — how much does breaking this wall matter, by when?

Read the full file on GitHub · 158 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. 10d ago First seen · 158 lines · 276 tokens per session scan A 8b6392d9e085

Subscribe to this mod's changes

unstuck is a skill published in the GitHub repository coreyhaines31/makerskills (801 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 276 tokens to every session and 2,528 once invoked, about $0.0014 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.

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