When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch

When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch is a skill for Claude Code from huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills. It costs 22 tokens per session (503 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for choosing a problem-solving technique when development work gets stuck. It links common symptoms—such as growing complexity or unclear scale—to specific approaches.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to identify why you are stuck, load the suggested technique, and apply it. It also points to parallel investigation when several independent problems can be worked on at once.
Why use it?
It helps avoid repeatedly trying the same kind of solution when the real problem is a poor assumption, a recurring pattern, or too many special cases.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: when-to-use in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions subagents; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Good fit Use it to identify why you are stuck, load the suggested technique, and apply it. It also points to parallel investigation when several independent problems can be worked on at once.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills/when-stuck
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 huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills --skill when-stuck
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

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 When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills/when-stuck/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills/when-stuck)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills/when-stuck"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills/when-stuck/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 When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills/when-stuck"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills/when-stuck.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 503 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 $0.00022 $0.00503
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00251
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00101
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00050

Measured 12d ago against content hash 0b6bcc7ecafb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch 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.

.agents/skills/problem-solving/when-stuck/SKILL.md · 58 lines

What it actually says

When Stuck — Problem-Solving Dispatch

Overview

Different stuck-types need different techniques. This skill helps you quickly identify which problem-solving skill to use.

Core principle: Match stuck-symptom to technique.

Stuck-Type → Technique

How You're Stuck Use This Skill
Complexity spiraling — Same thing 5+ ways, growing special cases simplification-cascades/SKILL.md
Need innovation — Conventional solutions inadequate, can't find fitting approach collision-zone-thinking/SKILL.md
Recurring patterns — Same issue different places, reinventing wheels meta-pattern-recognition/SKILL.md
Forced by assumptions — "Must be done this way", can't question premise inversion-exercise/SKILL.md
Scale uncertainty — Will it work in production? Edge cases unclear? scale-game/SKILL.md
Multiple independent problems — Can parallelize investigation Use Agent tool with parallel subagents

Process

  1. Identify stuck-type — What symptom matches above?
  2. Load that skill — Read the specific technique
  3. Apply technique — Follow its process
  4. If still stuck — Try different technique or combine

Combining Techniques

Some problems need multiple techniques:

  • Simplification + Meta-pattern: Find pattern, then simplify all instances
  • Collision + Inversion: Force metaphor, then invert its assumptions
  • Scale + Simplification: Extremes reveal what to eliminate

Quick Dispatch

Same thing implemented 5+ ways?       → simplification-cascades
Can't find fitting approach?          → collision-zone-thinking
Same issue in 3+ different places?    → meta-pattern-recognition
"This must be done this way"?         → inversion-exercise
Will this survive production scale?   → scale-game

Remember

  • Match symptom to technique
  • One technique at a time
  • Combine if first doesn't work
  • Document what you tried
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 · 58 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 0b6bcc7ecafb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch is a skill published in the GitHub repository huuanh20/awesome-ai-agent-skills (1 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 503 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 2026-08-31.

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