definite-optimism

definite-optimism is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from deciqAI/knowledge-skills. It costs 181 tokens per session (4,941 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A framework for judging whether a plan expects a better future and includes a specific way to create it. It contrasts that with vague optimism, pessimism, and plans that merely keep options open.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to assess company, career, or investment strategies. It is useful when deciding whether a plan is a concrete bet with a clear direction or only a collection of alternatives.
Why use it?
It helps expose strategies that rely on processes such as iteration or flexibility without stating what future they are trying to produce or how they will get there.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to assess company, career, or investment strategies. It is useful when deciding whether a plan is a concrete bet with a clear direction or only a collection of alternatives.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/definite-optimism
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 definite-optimism
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 definite-optimism

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/definite-optimism.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/definite-optimism)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/definite-optimism"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/definite-optimism.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 181 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,941 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 $0.00181 $0.04941
Opus 5 $0.00090 $0.02471
Sonnet 5 $0.00036 $0.00988
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00494

Measured 8d ago against content hash d4bb51a65e6e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

definite-optimism 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.

definite-optimism/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.

Definite Optimism

Overview

In Zero to One (2014, ch. 6), Peter Thiel and Blake Masters map attitudes toward the future on a 2×2: is the future better or worse than the present (optimist vs pessimist), and is it knowable and shapeable or a fog (definite vs indefinite)? Four quadrants follow. Definite optimism: the future will be better and I have a concrete plan to make it so — the US of the 1950s–60s that scheduled the Apollo program and paved the Interstate system. Indefinite optimism: the future will be better but I can't say how, so I accumulate options — modern finance, résumé-polishing generalists, "iteration" with no thesis underneath. Definite pessimism: the future is bleak but predictable, so build and stockpile against it. Indefinite pessimism: bleak and unknowable — drift and cope.

Thiel's sharpest claim is that indefinite optimism is internally incoherent: the future cannot get better if nobody plans to make it better. Its tell is process worshipped over substance — diversified portfolios instead of concentrated bets, optionality as a terminal value, A/B-testing your way toward a vision no one has written down. The honest counter-critique also stands: pure planning that ignores feedback ships the wrong thing confidently. The resolution this skill enforces: lean-startup iteration and an mvp are instruments inside a definite thesis — they test the steps, not substitute for the destination.

The operational move: you can read someone's true quadrant not from their pitch but from observable behavior — where the calendar hours go, where capital is allocated, who gets hired. Diagnose the quadrant, then, if warranted, convert the plan to definite optimism: one falsifiable long-term thesis, a concrete multi-year plan, concentrated commitment.

Quadrant reference (diagnose from the behavioral signature, never from self-description):

Definite (future is shapeable, plan for it) Indefinite (future is fog, keep options)
Optimist (future better) Concrete multi-year plan toward a named better future. Signature: concentrated capital, milestone dates, things visibly cut. Apollo program (goal set 1961, landed 1969); Interstate Highway System (authorized 1956, ~41,000 miles planned upfront). Expects improvement, can't say how it arrives. Signature: diversification, optionality worship, process metrics, résumé-polishing generalism, "iterate and see." Thiel's diagnosis of post-1982 US finance culture.
Pessimist (future worse) Expects a bleak but predictable future and builds for it. Signature: stockpiling, capacity hardening, disciplined execution against the expected bad state. Expects decline and can't do anything about it. Signature: drift, consumption over investment, coping. No plan because no future seems worth planning for.

Read the full file on GitHub · 158 lines

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 · 158 lines · 181 tokens per session scan A d4bb51a65e6e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

definite-optimism is a skill published in the GitHub repository deciqAI/knowledge-skills (10 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 181 tokens to every session and 4,941 once invoked, about $0.0009 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.

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