abductive-hypothesis-generation

abductive-hypothesis-generation is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine. It costs 21 tokens per session (897 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A reasoning method for finding the most likely explanation when an observation conflicts with what an existing theory predicts.

In plain words
What is it for?
Describing an anomaly, generating candidate causes, ranking them, and choosing a working hypothesis.
Why use it?
It turns a surprising result into several possible explanations and helps select the one most worth testing.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Describing an anomaly, generating candidate causes, ranking them, and choosing a working hypothesis.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/abductive-hypothesis-generation
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 yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine --skill abductive-hypothesis-generation
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 abductive-hypothesis-generation

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/abductive-hypothesis-generation/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/abductive-hypothesis-generation)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/abductive-hypothesis-generation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/abductive-hypothesis-generation/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

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agentmods 80×15 button for abductive-hypothesis-generation

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/abductive-hypothesis-generation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/abductive-hypothesis-generation.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 897 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
  • 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 $0.00021 $0.00897
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00449
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00179
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00090

Measured 12d ago against content hash bac51e2c9178, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

abductive-hypothesis-generation 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 12d 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/abductive-hypothesis-generation/SKILL.md · 95 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 95 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Abductive Hypothesis Generation

Inference to the best explanation in the face of anomalies: when an anomalous phenomenon that existing theory cannot explain is observed, systematically generate candidate explanations and select the most plausible one as the hypothesis.

When to Use

  • A clear anomalous phenomenon is observed (a result inconsistent with existing theoretical predictions)
  • Existing theory cannot adequately explain a known phenomenon
  • One of several competing explanations must be selected as the most worth testing
  • The research starting point is "this result is strange, why?"

Not applicable: no clear anomaly, just wanting to explore a new field → use inductive-hypothesis-generation instead.

Thinking Framework

Anomaly → Generate candidate explanations → Rank by plausibility → Best explanation = hypothesis

The core logic of abductive reasoning:

  1. Anomaly: precisely describe the anomaly — what phenomenon, inconsistent with what expectation, how large the deviation
  2. Generate candidate explanations: systematically generate all candidate explanations that can account for the anomaly (no premature filtering)
  3. Rank by plausibility: rank by plausibility — which explanation is most parsimonious, most consistent with known facts, most testable
  4. Best explanation = hypothesis: select the most plausible explanation as the working hypothesis, retaining the rest as competing hypotheses

Core principles of abduction:

  • Occam's razor: when explanatory power is comparable, prefer the explanation with fewer assumptions
  • Consistency: the best explanation should not contradict other known facts
  • Testability: the best explanation must be able to produce observable predictions (otherwise it cannot be verified)
  • Generation completeness: candidate explanations must be exhausted before ranking, to avoid premature convergence

Budget Gate

Tier Anomaly description Candidate explanations Hypothesis output Competing hypotheses
S 1 precisely described anomaly ≥2 candidate explanations 1 best-explanation hypothesis ≥1 competing hypothesis retained
M 1–2 anomalies ≥3 candidate explanations ≥2 structured hypotheses complete plausibility ranking
L ≥2 related anomalies ≥5 candidate explanations ≥3 structured hypotheses complete ranking + discriminating prediction design

Read the full file on GitHub · 95 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. 12d ago First seen · 95 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A bac51e2c9178

Subscribe to this mod's changes

abductive-hypothesis-generation is a skill published in the GitHub repository yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine (462 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 897 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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