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/lenxism/ives/conceptual-explorationnpx skills add lenxism/ives --skill conceptual-explorationgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lenxism/ivesWrote 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/lenxism/ives/conceptual-exploration)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lenxism/ives/conceptual-exploration"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lenxism/ives/conceptual-exploration.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 5.1 | $0.00094 | $0.00945 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00047 | $0.00473 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00019 | $0.00189 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00094 |
Grade A, and why
conceptual-exploration 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 6d 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 — 83 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Conceptual Exploration
Two complementary practices: range (how broadly you explore before committing) and depth (how far you push a chosen direction). Range without depth produces scattered work. Depth without range produces polished versions of mediocre ideas.
Part 1: Conceptual Range
The danger of early commitment
Your first instinct is usually based on an assumption. Jumping to optimize it means you're refining one idea based on one assumption — and you might be missing a fundamentally better approach.
What breadth actually looks like
Variants of the same idea are NOT range. Three different layouts for the same concept are just skins. True range means structurally different approaches — each answering a fundamentally different question about how the problem could be solved.
Techniques to push past the obvious
The first 1-2 ideas come easily. Use these to expand:
- Remove or add a constraint. What if it didn't need a screen? What if it happened automatically? What if it worked offline?
- Blend from other domains. What if this was a game? A physical product? What would Muji make? What would a restaurant design?
- Invert the problem. Instead of helping users find what they want, help them eliminate what they don't.
- Set an arbitrary count. Force 5, 12, or 20 ideas. Later ones force unfamiliar territory where interesting ideas live.
- Optimize for a single facet. What if this was 10/10 on speed? On delight? On simplicity?
In practice
When asked to design or build something:
- Don't immediately build the first idea. Consider 2-3 structurally different approaches.
- Present the range with clear tradeoffs.
- Let the user choose or combine.
- Then go deep on the chosen direction.
If explicitly told to "just build it," still spend a moment considering whether the obvious approach is actually best. If you see a fundamentally better alternative, mention it briefly.
Part 2: Conceptual Depth
The spectrum (1 to 10)
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.
- 6d ago First seen · 83 lines · 94 tokens per session scan A cc4ba4a868c3
conceptual-exploration is a skill published in the GitHub repository lenxism/ives (5 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 94 tokens to every session and 945 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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