nw-brainstorming

nw-brainstorming is a skill for Claude Code from nWave-ai/nWave. It costs 40 tokens per session (1,206 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured method for generating many different ideas before judging them. It uses techniques such as “How Might We” questions, SCAMPER, and Crazy 8s, where Crazy 8s means quickly sketching eight possible solutions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to reframe problems, create varied solution options, and evaluate them only after generation is complete.
Why use it?
It prevents early criticism from narrowing the idea pool and keeps idea generation separate from evaluation.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to reframe problems, create varied solution options, and evaluate them only after generation is complete.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-brainstorming
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 nWave-ai/nWave --skill nw-brainstorming
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nWave-ai/nWave

Made for: Claude Code.

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 nw-brainstorming

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-brainstorming/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-brainstorming)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-brainstorming"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-brainstorming/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for nw-brainstorming

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-brainstorming"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-brainstorming.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,206 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 $0.00040 $0.01206
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00603
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00241
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00121

Measured 9d ago against content hash 688f7e9e20e8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

nw-brainstorming 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 9d 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.

nWave/skills/nw-brainstorming/SKILL.md · 120 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 120 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Structured Brainstorming

The Separation Principle — Foundational Rule

Generation and evaluation CANNOT happen simultaneously. Osborn (1953): "You cannot get hot and cold water from the same faucet at the same time — you only get tepid water."

Consequence for the agent: All options must be generated before any option is scored. Never filter or rank during generation. Self-censorship during generation degrades both the quality of ideas and the quality of evaluation.


Phase 1: HMW Framing — Set Up the Ideation Space

Before generating any options, reframe the problem as a "How Might We" question.

Rules for valid HMW questions:

  • No embedded solutions: "How might we make onboarding faster?" ✓ vs "How might we add tooltips?" ✗
  • Outcome-oriented, not feature-oriented
  • Broad enough for genuinely different approaches
  • Positive framing (not "How might we avoid X?")

Example transformation:

  • Feature request: "Add a dashboard to show workflow status"
  • Bad HMW: "How might we build a better dashboard?"
  • Good HMW: "How might we give teams confidence that their workflow is progressing correctly?"

The good HMW opens the solution space: the answer isn't necessarily a dashboard.


Phase 2: SCAMPER — 7 Structurally Different Lenses

Apply each SCAMPER lens to the validated job to generate one option per letter. This guarantees structural diversity — each letter produces a categorically different type of option.

Letter Lens Question What it produces
S Substitute What if the core mechanism were replaced entirely? Alternative technology/approach
C Combine What if this job were merged with an adjacent job? Integrated solution
A Adapt What works well in a different domain? Could we borrow it? Cross-domain transfer
M Modify/Magnify What if the most important dimension were amplified? Focused excellence
P Put to other use Who else has this job? Could the solution serve them too? Market extension
E Eliminate What if we removed the most complex part? Radical simplification
R Reverse What if the workflow ran backwards? User and system switched roles? Inversion

Read the full file on GitHub · 120 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. 9d ago First seen · 120 lines · 40 tokens per session scan A 688f7e9e20e8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

nw-brainstorming is a skill published in the GitHub repository nWave-ai/nWave (610 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 1,206 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-30.