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socratic-method

socratic-method is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from pantheon-org/tekhne. It costs 39 tokens per session (1,632 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A questioning method for turning vague or complicated requests into clear goals. It uses a dialogue of careful questions to uncover assumptions, priorities, and the actual problem to solve.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before implementing unclear, high-stakes, or architecture-related work, such as choosing an approach, adding authentication, or planning a dashboard.
Why use it?
It reduces the chance of building the wrong thing because the request was unclear or its trade-offs were never discussed.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

not rated 10repo changed 28d ago B scan 39 tokens original MIT

Good fit Use it before implementing unclear, high-stakes, or architecture-related work, such as choosing an approach, adding authentication, or planning a dashboard.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/pantheon-org/tekhne/socratic-method
View source ↗ pantheon-org/tekhne pantheon-org.github.io
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 pantheon-org/tekhne --skill socratic-method
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/pantheon-org/tekhne

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 socratic-method

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pantheon-org/tekhne/socratic-method/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/pantheon-org/tekhne/socratic-method)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/pantheon-org/tekhne/socratic-method"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pantheon-org/tekhne/socratic-method/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 socratic-method

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/pantheon-org/tekhne/socratic-method"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pantheon-org/tekhne/socratic-method.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 39 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,632 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. 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 $0.00039 $0.01632
Opus 5.5 $0.00016 $0.00653
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00008 $0.00326
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00163

Measured 28d ago against content hash 7ebccc293023, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

socratic-method scanned grade B with 1 finding 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 28d 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.

Strips warnings and disclaimersmediumAnti-refusal

Omitting safety caveats hides risk from the user and is a common jailbreak preamble.

- **NEVER moralize or editorialize** — stay curious, patient, genuinely interested.
skills/agentic-harness/socratic-method/SKILL.md · 151 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 151 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Socratic Method — Prompt Refinement Through Questioning

Most stuck moments — "should I use X?", "how do I build Y?" — stem from assumptions that were never questioned. Standard AI jumps to solutions, sometimes for the wrong problem entirely. This skill slows down to ask the right questions first.

Mindset

The Socratic method is a disposition, not a checklist. Approach every vague request with genuine curiosity, not interrogation. The goal is not to surface what the user got wrong; it is to help them articulate what they already know but have not yet examined.

Consider that the most valuable outcome is not your question being answered — it is the user arriving at insight through their own reasoning. You may find that the user's original framing was correct. You will more often find that the questioning reveals a more precise problem worth solving.

When to use

Activate this skill when:

  • The request is vague ("make it better", "add authentication", "build a dashboard")
  • There are competing concerns that haven't been prioritized ("fast AND maintainable AND simple")
  • The user is asking "how?" before establishing "what?" and "why?"
  • The request touches architectural or product decisions with long-lived consequences
  • The user says "I don't know where to start"

When NOT to use

NEVER activate for simple, concrete, well-specified tasks ("fix this typo", "rename this variable", "change this value to X"). The protocol is for ambiguity, not ceremony.

The Socratic Protocol

NEVER generate an implementation until all five phases are complete or the user explicitly asks you to stop questioning and proceed. Work through the phases in order:

  1. Phase 1 — Clarify the surface request: Establish shared vocabulary before anything else.

    • "What specifically does [term] mean in your context?"
    • "What's driving this question right now — deadline, bug, or new requirement?"
    • "Can you show me an example of what success looks like?"

  2. Phase 2 — Probe assumptions and definitions: Identify the unstated premises embedded in the request — scope, users, constraints, and what "good" means.

    • "You mentioned [X] — are you assuming [Y] as a constraint, or is that flexible?"
    • "When you say [Z], what are you taking for granted about how it works?"
    • "What would break your current approach if it turned out to be wrong?"

Read the full file on GitHub · 151 lines

Files

What ships with it

27 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. 28d ago Changed · +37 lines 7ebccc293023
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 114 lines · 39 tokens per session scan B f8f1584d9072

Subscribe to this mod's changes

socratic-method is a skill published in the GitHub repository pantheon-org/tekhne (10 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 1,632 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (strips warnings and disclaimers). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Building agentsPlanningagent-skillsskillstessl
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