non-zero-sum

non-zero-sum is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from deciqAI/knowledge-skills. It costs 127 tokens per session (2,293 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A framework for finding situations where cooperation can leave all sides better off, even when a conflict looks like one side must lose.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design agreements, platforms, or institutions that align competing parties and create mutual benefits.
Why use it?
It helps uncover shared interests hidden by a win-lose view of a negotiation or dispute.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to design agreements, platforms, or institutions that align competing parties and create mutual benefits.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/non-zero-sum
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 non-zero-sum
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 non-zero-sum

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/non-zero-sum/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/non-zero-sum)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/non-zero-sum"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/non-zero-sum/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 non-zero-sum

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/non-zero-sum"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/non-zero-sum.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 127 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,293 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00127 $0.02293
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.01146
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00459
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00229

Measured 9d ago against content hash 11fad925722e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

non-zero-sum 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.

non-zero-sum/SKILL.md · 124 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 124 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Non-Zero-Sum

Overview

A non-zero-sum interaction is one where mutual gain (or mutual loss) is possible — the parties' outcomes do not simply cancel each other out. Most real-world conflicts and negotiations are not zero-sum, but feel zero-sum because we focus on the visible resource rather than underlying interests. Robert Axelrod's computer tournament showed cooperation can emerge without central authority when interactions repeat and the future is valued. Robert Wright extended this: the arc of history is driven by accumulating non-zero-sum arrangements — specialization, trade, institutions.

Compose with neighbors: Use prisoners-dilemma to model the payoff structure first. Use repeated-games-reputation when the key variable is whether interaction repeats. Use nash-equilibrium to find whether a stable cooperative outcome exists.

When to Use

  • A negotiation or conflict is deadlocked in zero-sum framing — each side treating every gain as the other's loss
  • You want to find latent cooperative value in an adversarial relationship
  • Designing an institution, platform, or contract to align incentives for competing parties
  • Someone says: "this is win-lose," "we can't both win," "what's in it for them," "could we cooperate instead of compete?"
  • A market is framed as winner-take-all — "AI will take all the jobs / margin," "the AI capex will only pay off for the platform," "AI-native startups will crush incumbents (or vice versa)" — and you need to test whether the layers can grow together instead

When NOT to use:

  • Genuinely fixed-pool, one-shot interaction with no side effects — non-zero-sum framing is wishful, not analytical
  • Interests are fundamentally incompatible (ideological, identity-based) with no concrete trade creating net value
  • The real constraint is power asymmetry → use batna-zopa instead

Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)

Read the full file on GitHub · 124 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 9d ago First seen · 124 lines · 127 tokens per session scan A 11fad925722e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

non-zero-sum is a skill published in the GitHub repository deciqAI/knowledge-skills (10 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 127 tokens to every session and 2,293 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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