think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses

think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses is a skill for Claude Code from product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills. It costs 129 tokens per session (1,290 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

An evidence-review method named Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, handled here as an evidence-based redirect because controlled studies found it increased confidence without improving accuracy.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when someone asks for ACH to assess competing explanations, while keeping its research limits clear and choosing a more suitable evidence-based approach for the actual task.
Why use it?
It avoids presenting a disputed analysis technique as a reliable way to find the truth. The input says the technique did not reduce confirmation bias or improve judgment in tested settings.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the thinking-framework-skills plugin — 68 skills, 10 commands, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it when someone asks for ACH to assess competing explanations, while keeping its research limits clear and choosing a more suitable evidence-based approach for the actual task.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses
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 product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills --skill think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install thinking-framework-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 68 skills, 10 commands, 1 agent.

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 think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses/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 think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 129 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,290 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 $0.00129 $0.01290
Opus 5 $0.00064 $0.00645
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00258
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00129

Measured 12d ago against content hash 06ffb8726b7d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses 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 12d 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/think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses/SKILL.md · 79 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 79 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH)

ACH builds an evidence-by-hypothesis matrix, scores each item of evidence for how well it disconfirms each hypothesis, and favors the hypothesis with the least inconsistent evidence. It is a famous intelligence-analysis technique, and it was tested and found wanting: in randomized controlled studies it raised participants' confidence without improving accuracy, and showed no debiasing or judgment-quality gain. This skill therefore does not reproduce the matrix as if it were valid. It owns the request, leads with what the controlled evidence shows, and routes you to the evidence-based move your actual job needs. The output is an honest redirect brief, not a disconfirmation matrix with a declared winner.

Before you run this: what the controlled evidence shows

ACH is tier X (tested and found wanting, not merely undertested). On its own home population and stated purpose, the controlled record is null-to-negative:

  • Otzipka (2025, Applied Cognitive Psychology): applying ACH significantly raised participants' confidence with no accuracy gain (confidence without accuracy).
  • Dhami, Belton and Mandel (2019, Applied Cognitive Psychology): 50 intelligence analysts randomized; steps were skipped, bias effects were mixed, and ACH may have increased judgment inconsistency and error.
  • Karvetski and Mandel (2020, Judgment and Decision Making, N=227): no gain in additivity, coherence, or consistency, and slightly reduced reliability.
  • Whitesmith (2019); Maegherman et al. (2021); Dhami et al. (2024, the matrix layout specifically failed to reduce bias); Otzipka and Volbert (2026): no debiasing.

The mechanism's documented flaw: counting inconsistencies treats evidence items as independent and equally weighted, which they almost never are. Institutional adoption is not outcome evidence. So this skill will not hand you a filled matrix and a "least-inconsistent" verdict, because that artifact is exactly what the trials condemned. It states the caveat and redirects.

Read the full file on GitHub · 79 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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. 12d ago First seen · 79 lines · 129 tokens per session scan A 06ffb8726b7d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

think-analysis-of-competing-hypotheses is a skill published in the GitHub repository product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills (15 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 129 tokens to every session and 1,290 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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