dialectic

dialectic is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from umputun/cc-thingz. It costs 63 tokens per session (638 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A two-sided analysis method for examining whether a statement is true. Separate agents look for supporting and opposing evidence, after which their findings are combined into a conclusion.

In plain words
What is it for?
Proving or challenging a claim, stress-testing a decision, and comparing strengths, weaknesses, risks, and unresolved disagreements.
Why use it?
It reduces confirmation bias, the tendency to notice evidence that agrees with an existing belief while overlooking evidence against it.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the thinking-tools plugin — 3 skills 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/umputun/cc-thingz/dialectic
Any agent
npx skills add umputun/cc-thingz --skill dialectic
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/umputun/cc-thingz

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install thinking-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 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 dialectic

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/dialectic.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/dialectic)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/dialectic"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/dialectic.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 63 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 638 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 $0.00063 $0.00638
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00319
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00128
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00064

Measured 5d ago against content hash d629180d77b0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dialectic 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 5d 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.

plugins/thinking-tools/skills/dialectic/SKILL.md · 85 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 85 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Dialectic Analysis

Objective analysis of a statement by running two agents with opposing goals in parallel, then synthesizing findings.

Process

Step 1: Launch Parallel Agents

CRITICAL: Both Task tool calls MUST be in a single message for true parallel execution. Do NOT use run_in_background. Do NOT launch sequentially. Foreground agents in the same message run in parallel and block until both complete.

Agent 1 (Thesis) — find all POSITIVE evidence:

  • what works well, improvements, correct patterns
  • supporting facts, proof the statement is TRUE
  • benefits, strengths, successful outcomes

Agent 2 (Antithesis) — find all NEGATIVE evidence:

  • what's problematic, issues, risks, anti-patterns
  • edge cases, proof the statement is FALSE
  • weaknesses, failure modes, hidden costs

Both agents must provide specific file paths and line numbers when analyzing code.

Step 2: Synthesize

After both agents complete, synthesize findings into an objective conclusion:

  • weigh evidence from both sides
  • identify where thesis and antithesis agree (strongest signal)
  • note unresolved tensions

Step 3: Verify

CRITICAL — after presenting the synthesis, verify it against actual implementation:

  • read the specific files and line numbers referenced by both agents
  • confirm the evidence cited actually exists in the codebase
  • check the implementation flow matches the claims made
  • verify the synthesis accurately reflects the actual code context
  • identify any misinterpretations or missing context from agent reports
  • revise synthesis if verification reveals inaccuracies

Use Cases

Architecture decisions:

/thinking-tools:dialectic this microservice split improves maintainability

Bug analysis:

/thinking-tools:dialectic the connection pool fixes the timeout issue

Performance claims:

/thinking-tools:dialectic caching reduced database load by 80%

Refactoring safety:

/thinking-tools:dialectic extracting this interface simplifies testing

Read the full file on GitHub · 85 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. 5d ago First seen · 85 lines · 63 tokens per session scan A d629180d77b0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dialectic is a skill published in the GitHub repository umputun/cc-thingz (466 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 63 tokens to every session and 638 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.