debate-kickoff

debate-kickoff is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from nyldn/claude-octopus. It costs 37 tokens per session (400 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A setup step that turns a loosely stated technical choice into a question with clear opposing positions, then starts a debate among available AI model providers. It checks whether enough different providers are available for an independent comparison.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for choices such as Redis versus Memcached or a monorepo versus separate repositories. It assigns sides and launches the debate workflow when the required providers are available.
Why use it?
It makes an ambiguous choice easier to evaluate and reduces the risk of receiving only one model's view. It also exposes when the available providers cannot support a genuine multi-model debate.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter, but also agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Codex.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the octo plugin — 70 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 18 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it for choices such as Redis versus Memcached or a monorepo versus separate repositories. It assigns sides and launches the debate workflow when the required providers are available.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
About the project

Claude Octopus is an orchestration project that sends research, design, and coding tasks to Claude Code and other AI model providers so their results can be compared. Developers use it for multi-model work, disagreement detection, reviews, persistent context, and an optional workflow that moves from discovery through delivery. The catalogue entries are its commands, skills, agents, instructions, hooks, plugins, and settings.

nyldn/claude-octopus · 4,058 stars · on GitHub · reddit.com

Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add nyldn/claude-octopus
Claude Code
/plugin install octo

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install octo, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 70 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 18 hooks.

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 debate-kickoff

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/debate-kickoff/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/debate-kickoff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/debate-kickoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/debate-kickoff/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 debate-kickoff

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/debate-kickoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/debate-kickoff.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 400 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 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 $0.00037 $0.00400
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00200
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00080
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00040

Measured 4d ago against content hash 0408325c9f4e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

debate-kickoff 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.

skills/octopus-starter-pack/debate-kickoff/SKILL.md · 27 lines

What it actually says

Debate Kickoff (Starter Pack)

Turn a loosely stated decision ("Redis or Memcached?", "monorepo vs polyrepo") into a well-formed multi-model debate.

When to use

The user has a two-or-more-sided technical decision and wants adversarial perspectives from different model families rather than one model's opinion.

Steps

  1. Extract the motion. Restate the user's question as a single debatable proposition (for example: "This project should use Redis over Memcached for session storage"). Confirm silently from context; do not interrogate the user.
  2. Check seats. Run ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/helpers/check-providers.sh and note which providers are available. A debate needs at least two seatable non-Claude providers for cross-lab disagreement; if only Claude is available, say so and offer a single-model pro/con instead.
  3. Assign sides. Give each available provider an explicit stance (affirmative, negative, or skeptic). Prefer cross-lab pairings (for example Codex affirmative, Antigravity negative) so disagreement is structural, not stylistic.
  4. Launch. Invoke /octo:debate with the motion and the side assignments. Display the standard Octopus banner with provider indicators before dispatch.
  5. Synthesize. After rounds complete, summarize where the models converged, where they genuinely disagreed, and give one recommendation with the strongest surviving argument.

Guardrails

  • External seats cost money; state the expected cost band from the CLAUDE.md cost table before dispatch.
  • Never fabricate a provider's position. If a seat fails, report the failure and continue with the remaining seats.
Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 4d ago First seen · 27 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 0408325c9f4e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

debate-kickoff is a skill published in the GitHub repository nyldn/claude-octopus (4,058 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 400 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 2026-09-05.

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