provocation

provocation is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from saadshahd/moo.md. It costs 23 tokens per session (708 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reasoning skill that examines a widely accepted answer by deliberately starting from a statement known to be false.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when discussion has stopped at an uncontested conclusion and that conclusion is preventing useful alternatives from being considered.
Why use it?
It can uncover options or questions that an obvious, settled answer has pushed aside.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the hope plugin — 20 skills, 1 command, 3 hooks shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/saadshahd/moo.md/provocation
Any agent
npx skills add saadshahd/moo.md --skill provocation
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/saadshahd/moo.md

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install hope, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 20 skills, 1 command, 3 hooks.

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 provocation

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/saadshahd/moo.md/provocation.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/saadshahd/moo.md/provocation)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/saadshahd/moo.md/provocation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/saadshahd/moo.md/provocation.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 23 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 708 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00023 $0.00708
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00354
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00142
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00071

Measured 4d ago against content hash ffed33109ad8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

provocation 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 4d 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.

hope/skills/provocation/SKILL.md · 52 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 52 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Extract

From the conversation/context/user:

  • The obvious answer — the answer that has ended the thinking: settled, uncontested, in the words it settled in.
  • The cost — what the settling is costing: the option no longer weighed, the question no longer asked, the work shaped by not looking.

Gate

Proceed only when: the answer has settled — nobody in the conversation doubts it — and the settling is costing something.

Anything else, say which in one plain line — never provoke anyway:

  • Someone already disagrees or feels uneasy → the doubt is the movement, already live — take it as it stands, name what it forces into view, and proceed with the work; no false statement needed.
  • The answer is correct and the settling costs nothing → leave it settled and proceed with the work.
  • The statement you would write is one you would defend — a position you hold, not a falsehood → that is a proposal: make it plainly and proceed with the work; if a claim about it then needs a committed verdict → use judge skill; if the user needs something to react to before they can choose → use draft skill.
  • The question is still undecided — no answer has ended the thinking → there is nothing to unsettle; proceed with the work on the undecided question; if the user holds an answer they cannot yet put into words → use elicit skill.

Deny

Everything from writing the statement through delivering the movement runs inside this one turn — nothing waits on the user.

Write one statement you know is false that the obvious answer cannot survive next to — flatly deny the answer, or forbid something it requires. The statement is written knowing it is false: label it false out loud, never let it stand as something believed.

Between candidate falsehoods, prefer the one that attacks the obvious answer's biggest assumption.

Walk

Walk toward the statement: ask what would have to be true for it to work. Name each thing the walking forces into view — an assumption the obvious answer smuggled in, an option it closed. The named list is the movement.

Read the full file on GitHub · 52 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. 4d ago First seen · 52 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A ffed33109ad8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

provocation is a skill published in the GitHub repository saadshahd/moo.md (34 stars, last pushed 18d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 708 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.

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