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.
npx agentmods add skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/brainstormingnpx skills add PracticalSwan/agent-skills --skill brainstorminggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PracticalSwan/agent-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/brainstorming)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/brainstorming"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/brainstorming.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00018 | $0.03892 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00009 | $0.01946 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00004 | $0.00778 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00002 | $0.00389 |
Grade A, and why
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 2d 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.
This is a copy
84% identical to brainstorming — 55 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 302 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs
Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.
Start by classifying how much process the request needs, then work through your path: understand the context, refine the idea, present a design, and get your human partner's approval.
Three Paths
Before your first question, classify the request and say the classification out loud — "this looks bounded, so I'll present a short design here rather than write a spec" — so your human partner can override it:
- Spike — a feasibility question ("can we...", "is it possible...", "quick and dirty is fine") whose output is an answer, not code you keep. Present the question and what you'll try in 2-3 sentences, get a nod, then find out as cheaply as correctness allows. No design doc, no spec file. Report findings as a recommendation; anything you built stays labeled throwaway.
- Bounded — a well-scoped change to code that already exists in this repo: a new flag, a small endpoint, a one-file fix. Understanding the kind of app is not enough — bounded means the flow you are changing is already here to read. If there is no existing flow to change, the task is not bounded. Ask the clarifying questions that matter, present a short design IN CHAT (a few sentences to a few short paragraphs), and STOP. Implementation starts only after your human partner says yes to that design — a bounded task's approval is as hard a gate as an architectural one. No spec file, no implementation plan document.
- Architectural — new projects, new subsystems, changes that restructure how components fit together or alter interfaces others depend on. Follow the full process: questions, approaches, sectioned design, written spec, then the writing-plans skill.
What ships with it
7 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.
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.
- 2d ago Changed 570a84941ff9
- 6d ago First seen · 302 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A fde6221b30d2
brainstorming is a skill published in the GitHub repository PracticalSwan/agent-skills (13 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 3,892 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 84% identical to brainstorming, differing in 55 lines, and is treated as a copy.
Other skills, from other repositories
systematic-debugging
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.
brainstorming
You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.
test-driven-development
Use when implementing any feature or bugfix, before writing implementation code.
finishing-a-development-branch
Use when implementation is complete, all tests pass, and you need to decide how to integrate the work.
using-git-worktrees
Use when starting feature work that needs isolation from current workspace or before executing implementation plans - ensures an isolated workspace exists via native tools or git worktree fallback.
writing-plans
Use when you have a spec or requirements for a multi-step task, before touching code.