thinking-lindy-effect

thinking-lindy-effect is a skill for Claude Code from tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills. It costs 35 tokens per session (556 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A decision rule for judging how likely a non-perishable technology, practice, or idea is to remain useful based partly on how long it has already survived. It also requires checking whether the surrounding field has changed significantly.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when comparing languages, frameworks, databases, protocols, dependencies, or architecture choices where future maintenance and survival matter.
Why use it?
It provides a starting point for choosing long-lasting options instead of treating every new tool as equally proven. It avoids relying on age when the technology domain has undergone a major shift.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Part of the cc-thinking-skills plugin — 28 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when comparing languages, frameworks, databases, protocols, dependencies, or architecture choices where future maintenance and survival matter.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/thinking-lindy-effect
About the project

Claude Code Thinking Skills is a catalogue of 28 portable skills that give coding agents structured procedures for reasoning about decisions, diagnosis, risk, strategy, and related problems. It is intended for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Cursor, and other tools that support Agent Skills.

tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills · 1,300 stars · on GitHub

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 tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-lindy-effect
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install cc-thinking-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 28 skills.

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 thinking-lindy-effect

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/thinking-lindy-effect/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/thinking-lindy-effect)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/thinking-lindy-effect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/thinking-lindy-effect/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 thinking-lindy-effect

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/thinking-lindy-effect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/thinking-lindy-effect.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 556 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. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 12 Mar 2026
  • Snyk pass 12 Mar 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00035 $0.00556
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00278
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00111
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00056

Measured 11d ago against content hash 82c22f0fdb5d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

thinking-lindy-effect 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 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.

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/thinking-lindy-effect/SKILL.md · 51 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 51 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Lindy Effect

For non-perishable ideas, technologies, and practices, expected remaining life scales with current survival age. Prefer proven survivors unless the new option clears a burden of proof or the domain has drifted.

When to Use

  • Choosing languages, frameworks, databases, protocols, patterns, or dependencies where long-term survival matters.
  • Skill or architecture bets whose value depends on lasting relevance.
  • Ranking options when ages differ materially and the choice outlives a short experiment.

When NOT to Use

  • Perishable targets: specific SaaS vendors, hardware, fashion, or products that can shut down regardless of concept age.
  • Active paradigm discontinuity where age in the old regime is weak evidence.
  • Throwaway work where longevity is irrelevant — optimize for fit and speed.
  • Treating "older" as "optimal for a new requirement"; survival predicts further survival, not best fit.

Procedure

  1. Confirm non-perishable scope. Concept/tech/practice continues; vendor/device → score fit/risk only and stop.
  2. Record survival age. First significant production use and current age (ecosystem-relative if the ecosystem is young).
  3. Form the Lindy prior. Expected remaining life ≈ current age; mark confidence from age and continued active use.
  4. Run domain-drift checks. Problem class changed? Paradigm shift invalidating old assumptions? New option uniquely closes a real present gap?
  5. Assign burden of proof. Default to the older adequate option. Accept newer only for a stated necessary advantage the Lindy option cannot meet at acceptable cost.
  6. Decide with residual risk. Pick primary; note impact if the prior is wrong and any fallback.

Stop condition: Primary chosen with age prior, drift check, and why new did or did not meet burden of proof.

Output

Options: <name, age, Lindy prior>
Drift: stable | discontinuous — <note>
Burden: on new | waived because <gap>
Decision: <primary>
Rejected: <one line each>
If Lindy wrong: <impact + fallback>

Read the full file on GitHub · 51 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. 11d ago First seen · 51 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A 82c22f0fdb5d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

thinking-lindy-effect is a skill published in the GitHub repository tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills (1,300 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 556 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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