what-so-what-now-what

what-so-what-now-what is a skill for Claude Code from HirogaKatageri/hirokata. It costs 136 tokens per session (1,147 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A message-structuring method that separates what happened, why it matters, and what to do next.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for post-mortems, retrospectives, incident reviews, status updates, and debriefs.
Why use it?
It turns scattered observations into a clear explanation and action plan, which helps prevent blame or unfocused discussion.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter.

Part of the storytelling plugin — 7 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it for post-mortems, retrospectives, incident reviews, status updates, and debriefs.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/hirogakatageri/hirokata/what-so-what-now-what
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 HirogaKatageri/hirokata --skill what-so-what-now-what
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HirogaKatageri/hirokata

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install storytelling, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 2 agents.

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 what-so-what-now-what

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hirogakatageri/hirokata/what-so-what-now-what/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/hirogakatageri/hirokata/what-so-what-now-what)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hirogakatageri/hirokata/what-so-what-now-what"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hirogakatageri/hirokata/what-so-what-now-what/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 what-so-what-now-what

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hirogakatageri/hirokata/what-so-what-now-what"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hirogakatageri/hirokata/what-so-what-now-what.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 136 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,147 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.
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 $0.00136 $0.01147
Opus 5 $0.00068 $0.00574
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00229
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00115

Measured 12d ago against content hash 01ae360aaa0a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

what-so-what-now-what 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 12d 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.

plugins/storytelling/skills/what-so-what-now-what/SKILL.md · 90 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 90 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

What / So What / Now What — Fact, Impact, Action

The Borton/Rolfe reflective model. Three questions, asked in order, turn a pile of observations into a decision. It keeps debriefs from drifting into blame or rambling: separate what happened from what it means from what we do next, and each stays clean.

   WHAT            →     SO WHAT           →     NOW WHAT
   the fact              the impact              the action
   (observe)            (interpret)             (decide)
   neutral, specific     why it matters          concrete next step

The Three Moves

  1. What — the fact. What happened, observed neutrally and specifically. Data, events, the observable record. No interpretation and no blame yet — just the ground truth everyone can agree on.
  2. So What — the impact. Why it matters. The consequences, the meaning, the significance. What did this cost / risk / reveal? This is the analysis layer — connect the fact to something the audience cares about.
  3. Now What — the action. The concrete recommendation or next step. Specific, owned, and time-bound where possible. This is the payoff; a debrief without a "Now What" is just a complaint.

When to use it (and when not)

Use it for: post-mortems and incident reviews, sprint retros, project debriefs, status updates, research/experiment readouts, performance conversations, "lessons learned" write-ups.

Reach for something else when: you're pitching or selling (→ storybrand, abt), inspiring on vision (→ golden-circle), or presenting a decision to a board (→ pyramid-principle, which leads with the recommendation rather than building to it). This frame is for reflection that produces action.

How to build it

  1. Separate the layers ruthlessly. Keep opinion out of "What" and keep facts from re-litigating in "Now What". Mixing them is what makes debriefs go sideways.
  2. Make "What" blameless and specific. "The deploy at 14:02 dropped the checkout service for 18 minutes," not "someone broke prod."
  3. Make "So What" quantify impact where you can — cost, users affected, risk, what it exposed.
  4. Make "Now What" an owned action, not a vague intention. "X will add a deploy check by Friday," not "we should be more careful."
  5. Repeat the trio per finding for a multi-point review; keep each self-contained.

Read the full file on GitHub · 90 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. 12d ago First seen · 90 lines · 136 tokens per session scan A 01ae360aaa0a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

what-so-what-now-what is a skill published in the GitHub repository HirogaKatageri/hirokata (5 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 136 tokens to every session and 1,147 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 2026-08-31.

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