second-order-thinking

second-order-thinking is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from martineserios/thebrana. It costs 82 tokens per session (4,994 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of second-order-thinking, MIT.

A decision-making method examines the later effects that can follow an initial choice. It is based on the idea that a decision's first result can trigger further reactions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for strategy, policy changes, competitive moves, product decisions, investment analysis, and other choices with lasting effects.
Why use it?
It helps reveal risks and opportunities that are easy to miss when considering only the immediate outcome.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Good fit Use it for strategy, policy changes, competitive moves, product decisions, investment analysis, and other choices with lasting effects.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/martineserios/thebrana/second-order-thinking
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 martineserios/thebrana --skill second-order-thinking
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/martineserios/thebrana

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 second-order-thinking

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/martineserios/thebrana/second-order-thinking.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/martineserios/thebrana/second-order-thinking)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/martineserios/thebrana/second-order-thinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/martineserios/thebrana/second-order-thinking.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 82 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,994 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 $0.00082 $0.04994
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.02497
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00999
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00499

Measured 8d ago against content hash b95f57bbc3cb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

second-order-thinking 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 second-order-thinking — 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/second-order-thinking/SKILL.md · 670 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 670 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Second-Order Thinking

Think beyond immediate consequences to understand the chain reactions of decisions. Master Howard Marks' investment framework for seeing what others miss.

When to Use This Skill

  • Strategic decisions where long-term consequences matter
  • Policy/rule changes that will trigger behavioral responses
  • Competitive moves to anticipate market reactions
  • Product decisions where user behavior may shift
  • Investment analysis to see past obvious conclusions
  • Avoiding unintended consequences in any decision

Methodology Foundation

Aspect Details
Source Howard Marks - "The Most Important Thing" (2011), Charlie Munger
Core Principle "First-level thinking says, 'This is a good company, let's buy.' Second-level thinking says, 'This is a good company, but everyone thinks it's great so it's overpriced. Sell.'"
Why This Matters Most people only consider immediate effects. Second-order thinkers anticipate the cascading consequences—and see opportunities and risks others miss.

What Claude Does vs What You Decide

Claude Does You Decide
Structures content frameworks Final messaging
Suggests persuasion techniques Brand voice
Creates draft variations Version selection
Identifies optimization opportunities Publication timing
Analyzes competitor approaches Strategic direction

What This Skill Does

  1. Maps consequence chains - Identifies 2nd, 3rd, nth order effects
  2. Reveals hidden risks - Finds dangers not obvious from first look
  3. Surfaces opportunities - Discovers advantages in counterintuitive moves
  4. Anticipates competitor responses - Predicts how others will react
  5. Avoids common traps - Stops decisions that seem good but backfire
  6. Improves long-term outcomes - Optimizes for total consequence, not just immediate

How to Use

Analyze a Decision with Second-Order Thinking

Apply second-order thinking to this decision: [decision]
What are the first, second, and third-order consequences?
What might we be missing?

Read the full file on GitHub · 670 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. 8d ago First seen · 670 lines · 82 tokens per session scan A b95f57bbc3cb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

second-order-thinking is a skill published in the GitHub repository martineserios/thebrana (3 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 82 tokens to every session and 4,994 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to second-order-thinking, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.