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 agentmods add skills/hoja-solutions/agent-stdlib/using-the-think-stepnpx skills add Hoja-Solutions/agent-stdlib --skill using-the-think-stepgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Hoja-Solutions/agent-stdlibWrote 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/hoja-solutions/agent-stdlib/using-the-think-step)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hoja-solutions/agent-stdlib/using-the-think-step"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hoja-solutions/agent-stdlib/using-the-think-step.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.00216 | $0.01260 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00108 | $0.00630 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00043 | $0.00252 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00022 | $0.00126 |
Grade A, and why
using-the-think-step 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 3d 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 — 71 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Using the think step
Source: The "think" tool, with the cross-mode decision drawing on the extended thinking docs. The pattern ships as MCP servers around the web; none package the judgment of when to use it, how it relates to extended and interleaved thinking, and how to prompt it. This pack ships the tool itself under mcp-servers/think/; this skill is about reaching for it well.
The think tool is a no-op the model can call to reason in the middle of a tool-use chain. It changes no state and returns nothing useful; its only job is to give the model a moment to lay out its reasoning before the next action. That makes it different from extended thinking, which happens once before the agent acts. The think step happens between actions, after the agent has seen a tool result and before it commits to what comes next.
Where the reasoning goes
A model can reason in three places, and each does a different job:
- Extended thinking, before the turn. The model plans before it acts or fires off parallel, independent tool calls. On recent models, turn on adaptive thinking and set an effort level; on older ones, set a token budget below
max_tokens. Reach for it when the hard part is the plan you make up front. - Interleaved thinking, between tool calls. The model reasons after each tool result, inside the same turn, before it picks the next call. Use it when the next action depends on reading the last result and the agent has to adapt as results arrive.
- The think tool, a logged checkpoint. A no-op call the model makes to write its reasoning into the transcript at a point you choose. Use it in long sequential or policy-heavy chains where you want the reasoning on the record and the model to check a rule before the action it gates. It works whether or not the model supports interleaved thinking.
The think tool and interleaved thinking both reason between actions, so they overlap. The think tool leaves an inspectable record and takes a prompt you control; interleaved thinking is lighter and needs no tool call. Reach for the think tool when you want to audit or shape the reasoning, and for interleaved thinking when you want the model to adapt on its own.
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.
- 3d ago First seen · 71 lines · 216 tokens per session scan A 22748c172016
using-the-think-step is a skill published in the GitHub repository Hoja-Solutions/agent-stdlib (1 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 216 tokens to every session and 1,260 once invoked, about $0.0011 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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