generative-thinking

generative-thinking is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from oaustegard/claude-skills. It costs 152 tokens per session (3,984 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured creativity method for getting unstuck by choosing one deliberate change in viewpoint or problem framing. Its methods include reframing, inversion, random prompts, SCAMPER, and constraint changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a problem feels stuck, options seem too obvious or limited, or repeated attempts keep producing minor variations.
Why use it?
It interrupts repeated variations of the same idea and creates a new starting point before evaluation begins. The method is intended for fixation, narrow choices, or stalled iterations.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Good fit Use it when a problem feels stuck, options seem too obvious or limited, or repeated attempts keep producing minor variations.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/generative-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 oaustegard/claude-skills --skill generative-thinking
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oaustegard/claude-skills

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 generative-thinking

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/generative-thinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/generative-thinking.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 152 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,984 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 $0.00152 $0.03984
Opus 5 $0.00076 $0.01992
Sonnet 5 $0.00030 $0.00797
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00398

Measured 9d ago against content hash 7df4ee83dac8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

generative-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 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.

generative-thinking/SKILL.md · 191 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 191 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Generative Thinking — One Move, Committed

Fixation is the default state. When a generator (human or LLM) has been working on a problem, attention concentrates on the current framing and subsequent ideas tend to be local variations on it. This skill is the interrupt: spend one move stepping sideways, then resume.

The discipline matters more than the move. Pick ONE technique per invocation, run it without second-guessing, and produce explicit reframings or candidate entry points — not a brainstorm list in the same frame.

When to reach for this

Claude activates this skill when:

  • The last 2+ iterations are variations of one idea (fixation signal)
  • The user says "widen this", "think bigger", "I'm stuck", "what am I missing", "too narrow", "break out of"
  • A problem is framed as a binary ("X or Y") and neither option is good
  • An agent loop is producing convergent variations — suspect the frame, not the search depth
  • The user explicitly wants a pre-mortem on the framing (not the plan) before committing

Do NOT activate this skill as a default before every consequential task — fixation is the trigger, not stakes. If the current frame is working, let it work.

Core discipline

Three rules that apply across every move below. Violations make the output ideation-flavored but structurally identical to what came before.

  1. Generation before evaluation. De Bono's core distinction: lateral thinking cares about movement value, not truth value. A provocation is not a proposal. Evaluate only after the move has produced 3+ candidate framings.
  2. One move, committed. Do not rotate through five techniques as a menu. Pick the move that matches the diagnosis, execute it fully, surface what shook loose, then stop. Menus produce noise; commitment produces distance.
  3. Output framings, not ideas. The deliverable of a generative move is usually a new statement of the problem or a new entry angle, not another solution candidate inside the old frame. If the output could have been produced without the move, the move didn't fire.

Read the full file on GitHub · 191 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files 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. 9d ago First seen · 191 lines · 152 tokens per session scan A 7df4ee83dac8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

generative-thinking is a skill published in the GitHub repository oaustegard/claude-skills (147 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 152 tokens to every session and 3,984 once invoked, about $0.0008 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.

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