socratesX

A question-driven requirements review for xflow, used before planning and splitting work into tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to clarify scope, behavior, technical direction, acceptance criteria, dependencies, and rollout decisions that cannot be determined from the repository.
Why use it?
It surfaces unclear goals, boundaries, constraints, trade-offs, and verification needs before they cause planning or implementation mistakes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/treex-x/workflowx/socratesx
Any agent
npx skills add TreeX-X/WorkFlowX --skill socratesx
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TreeX-X/WorkFlowX

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 19 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 681 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 $0.00019 $0.00681
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00341
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00136
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00068

Measured 2d ago against content hash b399f34cc801, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

socratesX 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.

.claude/skills/socratesX/SKILL.md · 57 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 57 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

socratesX

Use this skill as the xflow preflight, or when the user explicitly asks for Socratic clarification.

Purpose

Turn repository facts and user intent into a confirmed, executable brief for Hybrid Tree generation. Surface only assumptions, contradictions, boundaries, non-functional requirements, and implementation trade-offs that can change the work.

Responsibility boundary

  • module 08 explores the repository and reports relevant facts, files, dependencies, and constraints.
  • socratesX asks the user to resolve decisions that cannot be established from repository evidence.
  • orchestrateX projects the confirmed result into Parent/Child documents. It does not repeat requirement analysis.

Clarification protocol

  1. Work by analysis phase: goal and scope, behavior and boundaries, implementation direction, then verification and rollout.
  2. At the end of each phase, ask all unresolved questions found in that phase in one batch. Do not force one question per turn.
  3. Ask only questions whose answers can change scope, architecture, behavior, acceptance criteria, dependencies, or risk. Omit questions already answered by the request or repository evidence.
  4. Offer options only when there are two or more credible alternatives with a meaningful trade-off. For a fact, constraint, or single viable direction, ask directly. Do not manufacture options.
  5. Give a recommendation only when the evidence supports one. State the reason and the cost; allow the user to choose another direction.
  6. Do not invent missing intent. Mark unresolved items as [Needs confirmation] and keep them out of the final scope until resolved.
  7. Stop clarifying when the brief is sufficient to define Parent/Child scope and acceptance criteria. Do not keep asking low-impact preference questions.

Confirmation gate

Use an adaptive confirmation gate:

  • If a phase has unresolved decisions, present the batched questions and wait for the user's answers.
  • If the request is already sufficiently specified, skip exploratory questions and present one Ready Summary for confirmation.
  • After the user confirms a decision, treat it as settled. Do not ask for confirmation again unless new evidence creates a material contradiction.

Read the full file on GitHub · 57 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. 2d ago First seen · 57 lines · 19 tokens per session scan A b399f34cc801

Subscribe to this mod's changes

socratesX is a skill published in the GitHub repository TreeX-X/WorkFlowX (55 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 19 tokens to every session and 681 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.