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 skills add jdpalumbo2/workbench --skill dialectical-reviewgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jdpalumbo2/workbenchWrote 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/jdpalumbo2/workbench/dialectical-review)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jdpalumbo2/workbench/dialectical-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jdpalumbo2/workbench/dialectical-review/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jdpalumbo2/workbench/dialectical-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jdpalumbo2/workbench/dialectical-review.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" 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 5.1 | $0.00039 | $0.00710 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00016 | $0.00284 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00142 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00071 |
Grade A, and why
dialectical-review 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 1mo 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 — 43 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Dialectical Review
Overview
Take the current position as a thesis. Build its strongest good-faith antithesis — the real counter-position, not a strawman. Find where both are actually right. The synthesis that holds both is more defensible than the original.
Nobody has to be wrong for the picture to be incomplete.
When to Use
- A strategy, plan, or belief feels right but something nags — it's not the whole story.
- Before presenting a position to a client, stakeholder, or in a document that will get scrutinized.
- Two people (or two of your own thoughts) both seem right and seem to conflict.
Not for: factual claims that just need checking (use empirical-falsification) or plans that need attacking for gaps (use red-team-pressure-test). Dialectical review is for positions and beliefs, not verifiable facts or execution risk.
Core Pattern
- State the thesis precisely. Write the position as its strongest form, not a vague gesture at it. If it uses absolute language ("never," "always," "full stop"), that quantifier is itself part of what needs testing — the antithesis should target whether the absolute holds, not just whether the general direction is right.
- Build the real antithesis. Not the weakest opposing view — the strongest one, from someone who has genuinely thought about this and disagrees. Name what they'd actually say and why they're not simply wrong.
- Find the synthesis. Where do both hold? State the fuller position that survives contact with the antithesis. It should be more defensible than the thesis alone, not just a hedge between the two.
Example
Thesis: "We never discount — it protects brand value." Antithesis: accessibility for price-sensitive segments, competitive pressure from rivals who do discount, lost market reach in categories where discounting is the norm. Synthesis: never discount the core offer, but create a lower-tier product/tier that captures price-sensitive demand without eroding the premium anchor. More defensible than the absolute rule, because it was pressure-tested against the reason the rule existed to protect.
What ships with it
1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 43 lines · 39 tokens per session scan A a85139a7c6f8
dialectical-review is a skill published in the GitHub repository jdpalumbo2/workbench (1 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 710 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
codex-autoresearch
Run repeated, measured Git experiments toward a numeric target; keep improvements and revert failures. Use for autonomous optimization or managing an autoresearch run, not one-shot edits.
clipboard
Copy text to clipboard with optional rich formatting. Triggers on "copy to clipboard", "copy that", "pbcopy", "copy formatted", "copy rich text".
neo4j-modeling-skill
Design, review, and refactor Neo4j graph data models. Use when choosing node labels vs relationship types vs properties, migrating relational/document schemas to graph, detecting anti-patterns (generic labels, supernodes, missing constraints), designing intermediate nodes for n-ary relationships, enforcing schema with…
flue
Let agents control software, like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, Autodesk 3DS Max, Blender, Unity, Houdini, and Microsoft Office.
code-that-fits-in-your-head
Software-engineering heuristics based on Mark Seemann's Code That Fits in Your Head (2021), updated for agent-driven development. Use when writing or reviewing code, refactoring accidental complexity or a Big Ball of Mud, controlling technical or architectural debt in generated code, designing APIs and invariants…
rexai-image-generation
An image-generation skill that uses RexAI to create new images from text or transform existing images from other images. It returns the result as a local file.