IterativeDepth

IterativeDepth is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from danielmiessler/LifeOS. It costs 84 tokens per session (763 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured exploration workflow that examines one problem through two to eight different viewpoints, such as literal, stakeholder, failure, or time-based perspectives. Each viewpoint can reveal additional requirements and edge cases.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explore requirements, uncover failure modes, compare stakeholder needs, and find unexpected connections in a complex problem.
Why use it?
A single analysis angle can miss constraints, risks, or needs that become visible from another perspective. This workflow combines findings and turns them into testable criteria.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

About the project

LifeOS is an AI-assisted personal operating system that records a person’s goals, values, context, and current situation to help move them toward a desired future state. It supports work such as building applications, starting businesses, and creative projects. Its catalogue entries extend the system through skills, hooks, agents, and commands.

danielmiessler/LifeOS · 18,899 stars · on GitHub · ourlifeos.ai

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/danielmiessler/lifeos/iterativedepth
Any agent
npx skills add danielmiessler/LifeOS --skill iterativedepth
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/danielmiessler/LifeOS

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 IterativeDepth

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/danielmiessler/lifeos/iterativedepth.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/danielmiessler/lifeos/iterativedepth)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/danielmiessler/lifeos/iterativedepth"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/danielmiessler/lifeos/iterativedepth.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 84 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 763 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 5.1 $0.00084 $0.00763
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.00381
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00153
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00076

Measured 6d ago against content hash 4106ce2e3a8b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

IterativeDepth 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 6d 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.

LifeOS/install/skills/IterativeDepth/SKILL.md · 62 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 62 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Customization

Before executing, check for user customizations at: ~/.claude/LIFEOS/USER/CUSTOMIZATIONS/SKILLS/IterativeDepth/

If this directory exists, load and apply any PREFERENCES.md, configurations, or resources found there. These override default behavior. If the directory does not exist, proceed with skill defaults.

IterativeDepth

What It Does

IterativeDepth examines one problem through several structurally different lenses — literal, stakeholder, failure, temporal, and more — merging what each angle surfaces into ISC criteria a single pass misses. Grounded in 20 established techniques across cognitive science, AI/ML, requirements engineering, and design thinking (see ScientificFoundation.md).

The Deliverable

A done run produces:

  • A deduplicated ISC set — each criterion binary-testable, 8-12 words, phrased as a state not an action. No two criteria restate each other.
  • Refinements to existing criteria, each noting what changed and why.
  • Anti-criteria — failure modes that must NOT happen.
  • At least one surprising cross-angle finding — a requirement that only appeared because two lenses collided. A run that surfaces nothing a single pass would have missed added no value.

Passes stop when a new lens repeats what earlier lenses already found. Non-redundant angles are what matter; more angles for their own sake are not.

The Lenses

TheLenses.md is a catalog of eight exploration angles. Draw from it — pick the lenses the problem calls for, in whatever order, as many as earn their keep. No fixed count, no prescribed sequence: a security problem leans on the failure and adversary angles, a UX problem on the experiential one. Let the problem select the lenses.

Workflow Routing

Workflow Trigger File
Explore "iterative depth", "explore deeper", "multi-angle" Workflows/Explore.md

Reference

  • Lens catalog: TheLenses.md
  • Scientific grounding: ScientificFoundation.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 62 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files 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. 6d ago First seen · 62 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A 4106ce2e3a8b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

IterativeDepth is a skill published in the GitHub repository danielmiessler/LifeOS (18,899 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 763 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 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

maaslalani-cli-style

Build CLIs and terminal tools in the style of maaslalani (slides, nap, sheets, gambit, typer, invoice, gum). Use when designing or building a new CLI/TUI tool, restructuring an existing one, or reviewing a terminal tool's UX, layout, keybindings, or README.

Zfinix/aster · 70 tokens

i-have-adhd

Action-first, zero-filler replies for a reader who loses the thread in prose. Use when the user asks for terse or direct answers, says too long, get to the point, tldr, stop rambling, or when replies keep getting cut off or ignored.

Zfinix/aster · 60 tokens

plan-devex-review

Interactive developer experience plan review. Explores developer personas, benchmarks against competitors, designs magical moments, and traces friction points before scoring. Three modes: DX EXPANSION (competitive advantage), DX POLISH (bulletproof every touchpoint), DX TRIAGE (critical gaps only). Use when asked to…

Global-mindee/WAY · 156 tokens

plan-tune

Self-tuning question sensitivity + developer psychographic for gstack (v1: observational). Review which AskUserQuestion prompts fire across gstack skills, set per-question preferences (never-ask / always-ask / ask-only-for-one-way), inspect the dual-track profile (what you declared vs what your behavior suggests), and…

Global-mindee/WAY · 170 tokens

tabw

Use when the user asks to "continue every session", "send this to all windows", "/ar:tabw". Acts on Claude sessions across tmux windows; destructive to in-flight work, so it states what it will do before doing it.

ahundt/autorun · 53 tokens

tabs

Use when the user asks to "list my claude sessions", "which windows are waiting", "/ar:tabs". Discovers Claude sessions across tmux windows and reports which need attention.

ahundt/autorun · 40 tokens