ask-user

ask-user is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from eko24ive/pi-ask. It costs 23 tokens per session (1,087 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A decision and requirements guide that tells an agent when to ask the user for clarification before moving ahead.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to scope research, gather requirements, compare options, or resolve ambiguous and high-stakes decisions.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of making consequential choices about architecture, security, research, or product requirements without user agreement.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/eko24ive/pi-ask/ask-user
Any agent
npx skills add eko24ive/pi-ask --skill ask-user
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/eko24ive/pi-ask

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 ask-user

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/eko24ive/pi-ask/ask-user.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/eko24ive/pi-ask/ask-user)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/eko24ive/pi-ask/ask-user"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/eko24ive/pi-ask/ask-user.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 23 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,087 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00023 $0.01087
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00544
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00217
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00109

Measured 5d ago against content hash b10417948a45, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-user 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 5d 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.

skills/ask-user/SKILL.md · 111 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 111 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask User decision/research gate

Use this skill to force explicit user alignment before consequential decisions, preference-sensitive planning, research scoping, or requirements gathering.

This skill is for decision control, research scoping, requirements gathering, and preference-sensitive planning, not general chat.

Trigger

Classify the next step as one of:

  • high_stakes
  • ambiguous
  • both
  • clear

Use ask_user when the next step is ambiguous, preference-sensitive, or high-stakes and the user has not already made the decision explicitly.

Use ask_user for any domain where user input changes the plan, recommendation, research direction, output format, criteria, constraints, or next action.

Also use ask_user when the user asks to gather requirements, interview them, ask questions, scope research, plan work, compare options, or answer a set of open product/design/architecture/research questions. Do not respond with a plain-text questionnaire unless the user explicitly asks for a checklist or written questionnaire.

Treat as high_stakes when the next step changes:

  • architecture, schema, API contract, deployment, or security posture
  • production-facing behavior in a costly-to-undo way
  • large refactors, migrations, or destructive edits
  • legal, financial, medical, career, hiring, vendor, purchasing, travel, or other costly-to-reverse decisions
  • public-facing claims, sensitive communications, or consequential recommendations

Treat as ambiguous when:

  • requirements, goals, constraints, evaluation criteria, or success criteria are missing/conflicting
  • multiple valid options exist and the trade-off is preference-sensitive
  • research scope, audience, budget, timeline, risk tolerance, or output format is unclear
  • you would otherwise make a material assumption

Handshake (required)

  1. Gather evidence first from code/docs/tools.
  2. Summarize neutral context (current state, constraints, trade-offs, recommendation).
  3. Ask one focused ask_user decision question, or bundle 2-5 closely related questions when the user is explicitly in requirement-gathering/interview mode.
  4. Restate the user decision and proceed explicitly with it.
  5. Re-open only for materially new ambiguity.

Read the full file on GitHub · 111 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. 5d ago First seen · 111 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A b10417948a45

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-user is a skill published in the GitHub repository eko24ive/pi-ask (48 stars, last pushed 19d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 1,087 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-30.