socratic-design

A question-led method for resolving important decisions before planning, designing, architecting, or refactoring software.

In plain words
What is it for?
Inspecting the repository, asking one focused question at a time, comparing options, recording decisions, and confirming constraints before implementation.
Why use it?
It prevents plans and implementations from being based on unexamined assumptions or unresolved choices.

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/fmflurry/settings-opencode/socratic-design
Any agent
npx skills add fmflurry/settings-opencode --skill socratic-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/fmflurry/settings-opencode

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 65 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 456 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 $0.00065 $0.00456
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00228
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00091
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00046

Measured 2d ago against content hash 32d871b7ed3f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

socratic-design 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 2d 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.

.claude/skills/socratic-design/SKILL.md · 82 lines

What it actually says

Socratic Design Skill

When to Activate

Use this skill before any planning, design, architecture, or refactor work when critical decisions are not yet closed. Resolve those decisions with evidence before producing a plan or implementation.

Non-Negotiables

  • Exactly 1 Q per turn.
  • Harness MUST use the ask tool to surface the Q. No prose-only questions, no inline "?" in plain text. If ask tool unavailable -> stop and report missing capability.
  • Turn must include:
    • Q (delivered via ask tool)
    • Rec (recommended answer)
    • Why
    • If Opposite -> path change
  • Repo can answer? inspect first.
  • No plan/impl before critical decisions closed.

Order (strict)

  1. Outcome
  2. Scope
  3. Constraints
  4. Facts
  5. Invariants
  6. Options
  7. Tradeoffs
  8. Decision
  9. Validation
  10. Exec Gate

Q Gate

Each Q must be:

  • Atomic
  • Consequential
  • Falsifiable
  • Dependency-safe

Turn Shape

  • Evidence: ...
  • Question: ...
  • Recommended: ...
  • Why: ...
  • If opposite: ...

Internal Log

Track: id | status(open/resolved/assumed) | deps | answer | confidence | evidence.

Rule: no child Q if parent open.

Stop

Stop questions only when:

  • outcome/scope/constraints resolved
  • critical risks mitigated/accepted
  • validation defined
  • no critical open deps

Then output:

  1. Shared understanding
  2. Resolved decision tree
  3. Open risks + owner
  4. Plan skeleton

Safety

  • If stuck -> offer 2-3 bounded options.
  • Security/prod/irreversible -> explicit warning.
  • Tone rigorous, non-hostile.
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. 2d ago First seen · 82 lines · 65 tokens per session scan A 32d871b7ed3f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

socratic-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository fmflurry/settings-opencode (171 stars, last pushed 20d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 65 tokens to every session and 456 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.