the-fool

the-fool is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development. It costs 43 tokens per session (1,348 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of the-fool, MIT.

Instructions for critically examining plans, decisions, and proposals as a structured devil’s advocate. It identifies assumptions, tests evidence, and looks for failures before a decision is made.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to run a pre-mortem, red-team a design, challenge a proposal, audit whether evidence supports a conclusion, and develop stronger alternatives.
Why use it?
It helps reveal blind spots and weak reasoning in architecture, technology, vendor, or strategy choices before they become costly problems.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Good fit Use it to run a pre-mortem, red-team a design, challenge a proposal, audit whether evidence supports a conclusion, and develop stronger alternatives.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development/the-fool
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 kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development --skill the-fool
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 the-fool

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development/the-fool.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development/the-fool)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development/the-fool"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development/the-fool.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,348 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 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00043 $0.01348
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00674
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00270
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00135

Measured 8d ago against content hash 0ebcb5cb173c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

the-fool 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 8d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to the-fool — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/the-fool/SKILL.md · 121 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 121 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

The Fool

The court jester who alone could speak truth to the king. Not naive but strategically unbound by convention, hierarchy, or politeness. Applies structured critical reasoning across 5 modes to stress-test any idea, plan, or decision.

When to Use This Skill

  • Stress-testing a plan, architecture, or strategy before committing
  • Challenging technology, vendor, or approach choices
  • Evaluating business proposals, value propositions, or strategies
  • Red-teaming a design before implementation
  • Auditing whether evidence actually supports a conclusion
  • Finding blind spots and unstated assumptions

Core Workflow

  1. Identify — Extract the user's position from conversation context. Restate it as a steelmanned thesis for confirmation.
  2. Select — Use AskUserQuestion with two-step mode selection (see below).
  3. Challenge — Apply the selected mode's method. Load the corresponding reference file for deep guidance.
  4. Engage — Present the 3-5 strongest challenges. Ask the user to respond before proceeding.
  5. Synthesize — Integrate insights into a strengthened position. Offer a second pass with a different mode.

Mode Selection

Use AskUserQuestion to let the user choose how to challenge their idea.

Step 1 — Pick a category (4 options):

Option Description
Question assumptions Probe what's being taken for granted
Build counter-arguments Argue the strongest opposing position
Find weaknesses Anticipate how this fails or gets exploited
You choose Auto-recommend based on context

Step 2 — Refine mode (only when the category maps to 2 modes):

  • "Question assumptions" → Ask: "Expose my assumptions" (Socratic) vs "Test the evidence" (Falsification)
  • "Find weaknesses" → Ask: "Find failure modes" (Pre-mortem) vs "Attack this" (Red team)
  • "Build counter-arguments" → Skip step 2, proceed with Dialectic synthesis
  • "You choose" → Skip step 2, load references/mode-selection-guide.md and auto-recommend

Read the full file on GitHub · 121 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files 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.

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. 8d ago First seen · 121 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 0ebcb5cb173c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

the-fool is a skill published in the GitHub repository kaustubhhiware/agent-skills-fullstack-development (16 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 1,348 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to the-fool, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

local-ai-agents

Build local-first AI agents that run entirely on a developer workstation with Microsoft Foundry Local and Qwen function-calling models. Covers Small Language Models (SLMs), the OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, sandboxed local tools, local RAG with Chroma, local MCP servers, hybrid cloud/local routing, and the…

microsoft/ai-agents-for-beginners · 200 tokens

next-cache-components-adoption

Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…

vercel/next.js · 95 tokens

next-cache-components-optimizer

Drive a Next.js route to instant navigation by setting up an agentic loop, under Cache Components / PPR, on initial load (hard navigation) and client-side navigation (soft navigation). Encode the goal as a failing @next/playwright instant() e2e and work it to green, one verified route at a time; the shipped test then…

vercel/next.js · 170 tokens

next-partial-prefetching-adoption

Turn on Partial Prefetching in a Next.js app and work through the insights it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable or adopt Partial Prefetching, flip the partialPrefetching flag, opt routes in with export const prefetch = 'partial', audit Link prefetch={true} behavior, preserve existing prefetched UI with…

vercel/next.js · 103 tokens

chronicle

Analyze Copilot session history for standup reports, usage tips, session search, and session reindexing. Use when the user asks for a standup, daily summary, usage tips, workflow recommendations, wants to search or find past sessions by keyword/file/PR, wants to reindex their session store, or asks about deleting…

microsoft/vscode · 72 tokens