cognitive-evolution-stages

cognitive-evolution-stages is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from deciqAI/knowledge-skills. It costs 111 tokens per session (1,992 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A five-stage framework for understanding how people move from learning and imitation to independent understanding and original problem-solving. It diagnoses where someone is stuck in that progression.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to assess learning in developers, researchers, analysts, or creators, and to help people move from copying existing approaches to generating novel solutions.
Why use it?
It explains why someone may execute known methods well but struggle to create or adapt ideas independently. It points attention to the transition that needs practice.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to assess learning in developers, researchers, analysts, or creators, and to help people move from copying existing approaches to generating novel solutions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/cognitive-evolution-stages
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 deciqAI/knowledge-skills --skill cognitive-evolution-stages
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/deciqAI/knowledge-skills

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 cognitive-evolution-stages

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/cognitive-evolution-stages.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/cognitive-evolution-stages)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/cognitive-evolution-stages"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/cognitive-evolution-stages.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 111 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,992 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 $0.00111 $0.01992
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.00996
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00398
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00199

Measured 8d ago against content hash 2ce4ecd4327d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cognitive-evolution-stages 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 8d 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.

cognitive-evolution-stages/SKILL.md · 116 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 116 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Cognitive Evolution Stages

Overview

Most learning models treat acquisition as the final destination. This framework describes it as the starting line of a five-stage process (5阶段11层级) ending in evolution — where Stage 5 output restarts the cycle at a higher level. The diagnostic power is identifying where someone is stuck and what specific transition would unblock them. The most consequential stall is Stage 2→3: from imitation to genuine understanding with deliberate trade-off thinking.

Use AFTER [metacognition] to accurately self-locate. Use BEFORE [first-principles] — first-principles at Stage 2 produces confident error. Complements [nine-level-cognitive-tower]: this maps the PROCESS of development; that maps the STATE.

When to Use

  • A developer, researcher, analyst, or creator produces sophisticated work but cannot generate genuinely novel solutions
  • A team's "innovation" combines existing approaches without comparative trade-off evaluation
  • A person has mastered Stage 2 and feels "something is missing" — cannot generate without a model to copy
  • A mentee executes instructions perfectly but cannot diagnose what is wrong with their own approach
  • When NOT to use: person lacks Stage 1 knowledge; block is motivational not developmental; Stage 2 imitation IS appropriate for a brand-new domain

Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)

  • Engine mode: user has a concrete case → run The Process directly.
  • Coach mode: user is unfamiliar or has no concrete case → guide step by step.

In Coach mode, respond one step at a time. Each [WAIT] is a hard stop — output only that step's question, then stop.

  1. One-line what-it-is: "Five stages from knowing → copying → comparing trade-offs → creating new methods → self-correcting loop. Most people stall at Stage 2 because that's what gets rewarded."
  2. Check fit: "Pick one domain where you feel plateaued. What is it?"
  3. Elicit the real case: "Describe the last thing you produced there — did you start from an existing model or from the problem itself?"

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

  1. Map their work to the most honest stage. Ask: "What would Stage 3 look like — deliberately comparing 2-3 existing approaches and naming trade-offs before choosing?"

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

  1. Close: "If you reliably operated at Stage 3 in [domain], what would become possible that isn't now?"

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

Read the full file on GitHub · 116 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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. 8d ago First seen · 116 lines · 111 tokens per session scan A 2ce4ecd4327d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cognitive-evolution-stages is a skill published in the GitHub repository deciqAI/knowledge-skills (10 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 111 tokens to every session and 1,992 once invoked, about $0.0006 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

Other skills, from other repositories

voice-builder

Ingests 5–20 of the user's writing samples and distils a reusable voice-profile.md — signature phrases, sentence-length distribution, opener/closer habits, punctuation quirks, vocabulary do/don't lists, tone sliders, and three calibration paragraphs with self-checks. Other skills load this file so every post sounds…

alebgl77/claude-inc · 110 tokens

english-swe-daily

Daily English expression coach for intermediate software engineers. Use this skill whenever the user wants to improve their spoken or written English in a software engineering work context — especially for standups, Slack messages, 1:1s, meetings, giving feedback on code, asking for help, disagreeing politely, or…

wquguru/skills · 168 tokens

agent-teacher

A teaching aid that explains technical ideas with a small runnable code example and a guided walkthrough. It is meant for learning how something works, not fixing existing code.

JackyYang258/agent-teacher · 151 tokens

lecture-notes

Transform raw lecture content (transcript, plain text, or slides) into clean, structured, study-ready notes in Markdown. Use this skill whenever the user pastes lecture material — a transcript (with or without timestamps), course/lecture text, or slide content — and asks for notes, a summary, or help studying. Also…

ChristinaAndrinopoyloy/claude-skills · 125 tokens

master-debate

A skill for running an adversarial, multi-round debate between two Buddhist teachers. It is designed for questions where the teachers argue from different positions.

xr843/Master-skill · 127 tokens

master-yinguang

A reference-based assistant for questions about Yinguang and Pure Land Buddhism, a Buddhist tradition focused on faith, ethical living, and practice connected with rebirth in the Pure Land. It can answer in Yinguang’s historical teaching style.

xr843/Master-skill · 274 tokens