problem-solving

problem-solving is a skill for Claude Code from nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog. It costs 18 tokens per session (486 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of five structured techniques for working through difficult problems, such as simplifying a system, reversing an assumption, or testing how an approach scales.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for breaking down complex issues, generating alternative ideas, spotting shared causes, and checking whether a solution can handle larger demands.
Why use it?
It gives the agent a repeatable way to get unstuck when a problem keeps recurring or several approaches have failed.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter.

Needs its repository: it reads a path above its own folder, which exists only inside the repository. The line is Human-readable explanation: see [docs/architecture/HIERARCHICAL_PLANNING.md](../../../docs/architecture/HIERARCHICAL_PLANNING.md).

Part of the aura-frog plugin — 43 skills, 24 commands, 15 agents, 10 hooks, 6 MCP servers shipped together

Good fit It is for breaking down complex issues, generating alternative ideas, spotting shared causes, and checking whether a solution can handle larger demands.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/problem-solving

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install aura-frog, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 43 skills, 24 commands, 15 agents, 10 hooks, 6 MCP servers.

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 problem-solving

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/problem-solving.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/problem-solving)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/problem-solving"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/problem-solving.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 486 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00018 $0.00486
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00243
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00097
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00049

Measured 4d ago against content hash e1e8b54457d3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

problem-solving 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 4d 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.

aura-frog/skills/problem-solving/SKILL.md · 55 lines

What it actually says

AI-consumed reference. Optimized for Claude to read during execution. Human-readable explanation: see docs/architecture/HIERARCHICAL_PLANNING.md or docs/getting-started/ depending on topic.

Problem Solving Techniques

Use when stuck, need breakthrough, or evaluating approaches.

Decision Matrix

techniques[5]{symptom,technique,approach}:
  "Tried everything / spiraling",Simplification Cascades,"Strip to minimal → rebuild one piece at a time → find breaking layer"
  "Need creative idea",Collision-Zone Thinking,"Combine principles from unrelated domains into novel solution"
  "Same issue keeps recurring",Meta-Pattern Recognition,"List all similar issues → find shared root → fix the pattern"
  "Stuck in only-one-way thinking",Inversion Exercise,"State assumption → ask 'what if opposite?' → explore inverted approach"
  "Will it scale?",Scale Game,"Test at 10x/100x/1000x → find breaking point → design for 10x actual need"

Simplification Cascades (Most Used)

  1. Remove ALL features except core
  2. Make it work with hardcoded values
  3. Add ONE thing back
  4. Repeat until issue appears
  5. Fix at that layer

Inversion Exercise

  1. State current assumption: "We must do X"
  2. Ask: "What if we never do X?" or "What if we do the opposite?"
  3. Explore — often reveals a better design

Scale Game

Test at 10x, 100x, 1000x current load. Find breaking point. Design for 10x actual need (not 1000x).

Quick Reference

Stuck → Simplify first. Creative block → Collision zones. Recurring → Meta-patterns. Tunnel vision → Invert. Scaling → Scale game.

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. 4d ago First seen · 55 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A e1e8b54457d3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

problem-solving is a skill published in the GitHub repository nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog (24 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 486 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 2026-09-03.

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