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 nine-level-cognitive-towergit 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/nine-level-cognitive-tower)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/nine-level-cognitive-tower"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/nine-level-cognitive-tower/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/nine-level-cognitive-tower"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/nine-level-cognitive-tower.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00125 | $0.02199 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00063 | $0.01099 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00025 | $0.00440 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00013 | $0.00220 |
Grade A, and why
nine-level-cognitive-tower 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 — 123 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Nine-Level Cognitive Tower
Overview
The Nine-Level Cognitive Tower (九层塔) disaggregates cognitive development into nine distinct operating levels, each with observable behavioral signatures. The framework's value is diagnostic: it is easier to design the right next step when you can name exactly where you are and what the adjacent level looks like.
The common misapplication is aspirational self-placement — people rate themselves two to three levels higher than their behavior demonstrates.
Use AFTER [metacognition] (accurate self-assessment is the prerequisite). Use BEFORE [okr-goal-setting] to ensure growth goals match your actual level. Complements [first-principles] — a Level 7-8 capability that produces confident error when applied prematurely at Level 3-4.
When to Use
- You or someone on your team is stuck: making good tactical decisions but unable to form strategic views independently
- A person consistently defers to authority, consensus, or "what everyone does" rather than reasoning from evidence
- A learning or development intervention is needed and you want to target the specific bottleneck, not a generic curriculum
- A founder, manager, or individual contributor says "I don't know how to think for myself" or "I can see the problem but can't figure out what to do"
- Post-mortem reveals that a decision failure was a cognitive-level mismatch (Level 3 person making a Level 7 decision)
When NOT to use:
- When the person needs domain knowledge, not cognitive development — this framework addresses thinking structure, not content gaps
- When the issue is motivation, not cognition — a disengaged person is not at Level 1 cognitively; they are not engaged at all
- When you need a quick decision and the situation does not require diagnostic depth
- When the nine levels are being used to rank or demote people rather than develop them
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.
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 · 123 lines · 125 tokens per session scan A 849dacf39b10
nine-level-cognitive-tower is a skill published in the GitHub repository deciqAI/knowledge-skills (10 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 125 tokens to every session and 2,199 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 2026-09-03.
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