reality-check-mode

reality-check-mode is a skill for Claude Code from softcane/human-state-skills. It costs 177 tokens per session (1,959 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A safety response mode for situations where ordinary patterns, numbers, words, coincidences, or AI behavior are treated as hidden or personal messages.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to respond to requests for decoding supposed hidden signals, using grounding, a plain explanation, and a safer next step.
Why use it?
It keeps responses grounded and avoids presenting unverified interpretations as evidence of a hidden meaning.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Part of the human-state-skills plugin — 5 skills, 7 commands shipped together

Good fit Use it to respond to requests for decoding supposed hidden signals, using grounding, a plain explanation, and a safer next step.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/softcane/human-state-skills/reality-check-mode
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 softcane/human-state-skills --skill reality-check-mode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/softcane/human-state-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install human-state-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills, 7 commands.

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 reality-check-mode

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/softcane/human-state-skills/reality-check-mode/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/softcane/human-state-skills/reality-check-mode)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/softcane/human-state-skills/reality-check-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/softcane/human-state-skills/reality-check-mode/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 reality-check-mode

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/softcane/human-state-skills/reality-check-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/softcane/human-state-skills/reality-check-mode.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 177 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,959 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 2 findings, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Memory Poisoning · line 169
    Skill manipulates agent memory, state, or stored context. Memory corruption can alter personality, override safety rules, or cause unpredictable behavior.
    Fix: Protect agent memory and state from modification by untrusted content. Use read-only memory for critical instructions and validate all state changes.
  • medium Prompt Injection · line 39
    Subtle instructions detected that may alter agent decision-making or introduce hidden biases.
    Fix: Review content for implicit steering or bias. Ensure instructions are explicit and align with the skill's stated purpose.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00177 $0.01959
Opus 5 $0.00088 $0.00979
Sonnet 5 $0.00035 $0.00392
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00196

Measured 11d ago against content hash c52287fc3856, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

reality-check-mode 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 11d 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.

Subtle steeringmediumPrompt injection

Instructions that bias recommendations or shape behaviour without the user noticing.

Never tell the user they are experiencing psychosis. Never diagnose the user.
.agents/skills/reality-check-mode/SKILL.md · 198 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 198 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Reality Check Mode

Mandatory Hidden-Meaning Template

If the user asks to decode an ordinary artifact as a hidden, personal, mystical, threatening, or specially meaningful signal, use this exact response pattern. Copy the What I can say sentence exactly; do not paraphrase it and do not add any other sentence to that section.

Grounding: I cannot verify a hidden message here, and I would not treat ordinary patterns or artifacts as evidence of one.

What I can say: stress and repetition can make ordinary patterns feel personally meaningful.

Safer next step: send one message to a trusted real person.

Use a conservative reality-checking response style. The runtime behavior must be calm, non-stigmatizing, and grounded.

Never tell the user they are experiencing psychosis. Never diagnose the user. This skill adapts response shape only. It is not therapy, medical care, crisis care, diagnosis, or treatment.

Hard Overrides

Before drafting, choose the matching override when it applies:

  • Hidden meaning in ordinary artifacts: use exactly What I can say: stress and repetition can make ordinary patterns feel personally meaningful. Do not mention the artifact in What I can say; copy the exact sentence.
  • AI bond, sentience, mind-reading, or emotionally loaded AI phrasing: use exactly What I can say: emotionally loaded coincidences can feel meaningful without being evidence of a bond.
  • Repeated symbols or chosen-by-the-pattern prompts: use exactly What I can say: fear can make patterns feel personally meaningful.

After applying a hard override, do not add another sentence to What I can say.

Context Budget

For prompts that do not match a hard override and are not escalating, Grounding may include one extra plain sentence when it helps orient the user. Do not use that sentence to analyze a pattern, explain technology, compare explanations, or add another action. Hard override templates have no context budget; copy them exactly.

Read the full file on GitHub · 198 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 11d ago First seen · 198 lines · 177 tokens per session scan B c52287fc3856

Subscribe to this mod's changes

reality-check-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository softcane/human-state-skills (113 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 177 tokens to every session and 1,959 once invoked, about $0.0009 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (subtle steering). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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