s4h-historical-precedent-analysis

s4h-historical-precedent-analysis is a skill for Claude Code from human-avatar/skills-for-humanity. It costs 69 tokens per session (1,313 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for finding historical situations that are structurally similar to a current decision, rather than merely looking similar on the surface.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to abstract a current problem, find relevant precedents, and apply what those cases reveal to the decision at hand.
Why use it?
It reduces false confidence from weak analogies by comparing underlying incentives, constraints, and conflicts.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the skills-for-humanity plugin — 197 skills, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to abstract a current problem, find relevant precedents, and apply what those cases reveal to the decision at hand.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis
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 human-avatar/skills-for-humanity --skill s4h-historical-precedent-analysis
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skills-for-humanity, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 197 skills, 1 hook.

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 s4h-historical-precedent-analysis

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis/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 s4h-historical-precedent-analysis

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/human-avatar/skills-for-humanity/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,313 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 $0.00069 $0.01313
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00656
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00263
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00131

Measured 9d ago against content hash 2f148678efb3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

s4h-historical-precedent-analysis 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.

skills/s4h-historical-precedent-analysis/SKILL.md · 129 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 129 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Historical Precedent Analysis

History doesn't repeat — but structures do. The error is searching for surface similarity (same industry, same technology, same geography) and missing structural similarity (same underlying dynamics, same constraint set, same incentive conflicts). Superficial precedents produce false confidence. Structural precedents produce genuine insight. This skill finds the real ones.


Your Process

Step 1: Abstract the Situation Strip away domain-specific language and surface details. What is the underlying structural pattern? Describe it in terms that could apply across industries and eras: a new entrant facing incumbents with switching-cost moats; a coalition with aligned goals but divergent interests trying to coordinate; a technology displacing a profession whose members control the adoption decision. State the situation in these structural terms — this is what you'll search for in history.

Framing check: Confirm the specific situation before continuing. State what you've identified — the actual situation being analyzed and its core structural pattern — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:

  • Question: "I'm reading this as: [your one-sentence structural framing of the situation]. Is that right?"
  • Header: "Framing"
  • Options:
    • Yes — proceed — framing is correct
    • Adjust — one element is off; user will correct it before you continue
    • Reframe — different situation than read; incorporate the correction before proceeding

Step 2: Search for Structural Precedents Deliberately look outside the obvious domain. The most obvious precedent (same industry, earlier decade) usually has the most surface similarity and the least structural insight — the surface differences are visible but the structural similarities are already assumed. Search across industries, eras, and scales for situations with the same underlying dynamics.

Before narrowing: Show the complete generated set to the user first. Use AskUserQuestion:

  • Question: "I've identified [N] candidate precedents. Before I select the most structurally similar, are there any you'd flag as especially important, or any I've missed?"
  • Header: "Prioritise"
  • Options:
    • Proceed with your selection — the set looks right
    • Flag one — user will name a specific precedent to include
    • Add a missing one — user will describe it

Read the full file on GitHub · 129 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. 9d ago First seen · 129 lines · 69 tokens per session scan A 2f148678efb3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

s4h-historical-precedent-analysis is a skill published in the GitHub repository human-avatar/skills-for-humanity (223 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 1,313 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 2026-09-03.

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