SystemsThinking

SystemsThinking is a skill for Claude Code from danielmiessler/LifeOS. It costs 90 tokens per session (2,435 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured way to study complex systems by mapping feedback, hidden causes, recurring patterns, and points where a small change may have a large effect.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to examine feedback loops, trace problems from symptoms to underlying structures, compare system patterns, and map related ideas.
Why use it?
It helps explain why a problem keeps returning instead of treating only its visible symptoms.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: background in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

Good fit Use it to examine feedback loops, trace problems from symptoms to underlying structures, compare system patterns, and map related ideas.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/danielmiessler/lifeos/systemsthinking
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 · 19,573 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.

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

Made for: Claude Code.

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 SystemsThinking

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/danielmiessler/lifeos/systemsthinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/danielmiessler/lifeos/systemsthinking.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 90 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,435 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Snyk pass 7 Sept 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 23
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
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 $0.00090 $0.02435
Opus 5.5 $0.00036 $0.00974
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00018 $0.00487
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00244

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 791127428046, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

SystemsThinking scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 1mo 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -s -X POST http://localhost:31337/notify \
LifeOS/install/skills/SystemsThinking/SKILL.md · 175 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 175 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/SystemsThinking/

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.

MANDATORY: Voice Notification (REQUIRED BEFORE ANY ACTION)

You MUST send this notification BEFORE doing anything else when this skill is invoked.

  1. Send voice notification:

    curl -s -X POST http://localhost:31337/notify \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"message": "Running the WORKFLOWNAME workflow in the SystemsThinking skill to ACTION"}' \
      > /dev/null 2>&1 &
    
  2. Output text notification:

    Running the **WorkflowName** workflow in the **SystemsThinking** skill to ACTION...
    

This is not optional. Execute this curl command immediately upon skill invocation.


SystemsThinking Skill

What It Does

Analyzes complex systems to reveal why the same problem keeps coming back and where a small change produces a large result. Five workflows: Iceberg (walk symptom down to structure), CausalLoop (map feedback loops), FindArchetype (match a known pattern and apply its fix), FindLeverage (Meadows' 12 leverage points), ConceptMap (Novak entity-relationship). Grounded in Donella Meadows, Peter Senge, Jay Forrester, Russell Ackoff, and the Santa Fe Institute tradition.

The Problem

Most attempts to fix a recurring problem operate at the event layer — patch the bug, retry the request, add another check — and the problem comes back, because the real cause lives 3-4 layers below in the structure that generates the events. People also can't see second-order effects: a "fix" ships and creates a new problem, or makes the original worse. Without a way to see the structure, you treat symptoms forever and the obvious lever is almost never where the symptom shows up.

Read the full file on GitHub · 175 lines

Files

What ships with it

8 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. 1mo ago First seen · 175 lines · 90 tokens per session scan A 791127428046

Subscribe to this mod's changes

SystemsThinking is a skill published in the GitHub repository danielmiessler/LifeOS (19,573 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 90 tokens to every session and 2,435 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

long-running-work

Carrying complex coding and project work through commands that take minutes or hours: evals, benchmarks, full builds and test suites, migrations, servers, multi-round runs. Use when a command may run past a few minutes, timed out once, or when the task spans several rounds of run, read results, fix, run again.

Zfinix/aster · 0 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

shortcuts

Run Apple Shortcuts on this Mac: list the available shortcuts first, then run one by exact name with optional input. Use when the user wants to trigger a shortcut or asks what shortcuts exist.

Zfinix/aster · 0 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

aster-capabilities

The complete map of what Aster can do and the exact command, flag, slash command, key, or config for each: install and sign-in, the chat TUI, permission modes and rules, every agent tool, review and fix, sessions, memory, config/keys/provider/model, mom.yaml routing, skills, plugins, MCP, web tools, sub-agents and…

Zfinix/aster · 0 tokens