When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch

When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch is a skill for Claude Code from obra/superpowers-skills. It costs 22 tokens per session (929 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for choosing a problem-solving technique based on the kind of problem blocking you.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when you are stuck and need to decide which investigation or design approach to try next.
Why use it?
It replaces unstructured trial and error with a way to identify whether the issue involves complexity, assumptions, missing patterns, scale, innovation, or bugs.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: when-to-use in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it when you are stuck and need to decide which investigation or design approach to try next.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/obra/superpowers-skills/when-stuck
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 obra/superpowers-skills --skill when-stuck
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/obra/superpowers-skills

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 When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/when-stuck.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/when-stuck)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/when-stuck"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/when-stuck.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 929 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 $0.00022 $0.00929
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00464
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00186
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00093

Measured 8d ago against content hash 3f5dd9d0dee4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch 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

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/problem-solving/when-stuck/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch

Overview

Different stuck-types need different techniques. This skill helps you quickly identify which problem-solving skill to use.

Core principle: Match stuck-symptom to technique.

Quick Dispatch

digraph stuck_dispatch {
    rankdir=TB;
    node [shape=box, style=rounded];

    stuck [label="You're Stuck", shape=ellipse, style=filled, fillcolor=lightblue];

    complexity [label="Same thing implemented 5+ ways?\nGrowing special cases?\nExcessive if/else?"];
    innovation [label="Can't find fitting approach?\nConventional solutions inadequate?\nNeed breakthrough?"];
    patterns [label="Same issue in different places?\nFeels familiar across domains?\nReinventing wheels?"];
    assumptions [label="Solution feels forced?\n'This must be done this way'?\nStuck on assumptions?"];
    scale [label="Will this work at production?\nEdge cases unclear?\nUnsure of limits?"];
    bugs [label="Code behaving wrong?\nTest failing?\nUnexpected output?"];

    stuck -> complexity;
    stuck -> innovation;
    stuck -> patterns;
    stuck -> assumptions;
    stuck -> scale;
    stuck -> bugs;

    complexity -> simp [label="yes"];
    innovation -> collision [label="yes"];
    patterns -> meta [label="yes"];
    assumptions -> invert [label="yes"];
    scale -> scale_skill [label="yes"];
    bugs -> debug [label="yes"];

    simp [label="skills/problem-solving/\nsimplification-cascades", shape=box, style="rounded,filled", fillcolor=lightgreen];
    collision [label="skills/problem-solving/\ncollision-zone-thinking", shape=box, style="rounded,filled", fillcolor=lightgreen];
    meta [label="skills/problem-solving/\nmeta-pattern-recognition", shape=box, style="rounded,filled", fillcolor=lightgreen];
    invert [label="skills/problem-solving/\ninversion-exercise", shape=box, style="rounded,filled", fillcolor=lightgreen];
    scale_skill [label="skills/problem-solving/\nscale-game", shape=box, style="rounded,filled", fillcolor=lightgreen];
    debug [label="skills/debugging/\nsystematic-debugging", shape=box, style="rounded,filled", fillcolor=lightyellow];
}

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 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 · 89 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 3f5dd9d0dee4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

When Stuck - Problem-Solving Dispatch is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers-skills (746 stars, last pushed 10mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 929 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 2026-08-30.