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.
npx skills add deciqAI/knowledge-skills --skill middle-waygit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/deciqAI/knowledge-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/middle-way)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/middle-way"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/middle-way/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/middle-way"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/middle-way.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00137 | $0.01714 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00068 | $0.00857 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00027 | $0.00343 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00014 | $0.00171 |
Grade A, and why
middle-way 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 9d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 117 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
The Middle Way (中庸 Zhongyong)
Overview
中庸 (Zhongyong) is Confucian philosophy attributed to Zisi (c. 481-402 BCE). Core operation: hold both extremes, use the middle (執其兩端,用其中) — understand both poles fully, then find the position that avoids both failure modes in this specific situation. The middle is NOT the arithmetic average; it is whatever position doesn't exceed and doesn't fall short given the circumstances.
Composes with first-principles (middle must be defensible from bedrock), second-order-thinking (extremes often fail at second order), and wu-wei.
When to Use
- A debate is framed as binary ("regulate or deregulate," "centralize or decentralize") and both poles seem to fail
- Extreme positions are gaining momentum through ideological purity
- "Compromise" is being dismissed as weakness or unprincipled
- The optimal answer is "it depends" — and you need to make the dependency precise
Not when: the situation is genuinely binary; one pole is correct on the evidence (middle = false balance); urgency requires committing to one side and iterating.
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.
- One-line: the middle isn't half of A plus half of B — it's the specific position that avoids both failure modes.
- Check fit: truly binary / clear evidence on one side / urgency demands commitment → not this lens.
- Elicit the binary: what are the two poles the user sees?
[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]
- Ask: what's the failure mode of pole A? of pole B? What does the specific situation require?
[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]
- Close: name the position that avoids both failures, with the reasoning visible.
[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]
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.
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.
- 9d ago First seen · 117 lines · 137 tokens per session scan A 7fc6931f49ca
middle-way is a skill published in the GitHub repository deciqAI/knowledge-skills (10 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 137 tokens to every session and 1,714 once invoked, about $0.0007 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 2026-09-03.
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