ethical-thinking

ethical-thinking is a skill for Claude Code from ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills. It costs 128 tokens per session (889 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured method for examining the ethical effects of a plan or product. It considers affected people, competing values, possible harms, power differences, fairness, and available choices.

In plain words
What is it for?
Running an ethics review of products, plans, or actions and producing a reasoned recommendation.
Why use it?
It helps reveal who may be disadvantaged and makes tradeoffs explicit before a decision is made.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the ai-agent-skills plugin — 10 skills shipped together

Good fit Running an ethics review of products, plans, or actions and producing a reasoned recommendation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/ethical-thinking
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 ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills --skill ethical-thinking
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install ai-agent-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 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 ethical-thinking

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/ethical-thinking/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/ethical-thinking)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/ethical-thinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/ethical-thinking/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 ethical-thinking

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/ethical-thinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/ethical-thinking.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 128 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 889 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.
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 $0.00128 $0.00889
Opus 5 $0.00064 $0.00445
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00178
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00089

Measured 10d ago against content hash d8b90fc5630f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ethical-thinking 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 10d 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/ethical-thinking/SKILL.md · 87 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 87 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ethical Thinking

Ethics is about conflicts between legitimate goods. End with transparent tradeoffs, not false certainty.

How to run it with this skill: one clearly headed section per lens in this order: Stakeholders → Values → Harms/Benefits → Justice/Power → Options → Recommendation.


Setup (run before starting)

In one short block:

  1. Ethical focal action — what is being considered?
  2. Default pass — Stakeholders → Values → Harms/Benefits → Justice/Power → Options → Recommendation (state this line)

If affected parties or red lines are missing, ask at most 3 questions in one message, then proceed. Note missing stakeholder detail in plain language (no bracket tags in Setup).

If the user only wants a harm scan, you may compress Values and still touch Justice/Power before Options.


The Lenses

Stakeholders

Who is affected (direct / indirect / future / non-human if ecologically relevant)? Vulnerability — describe dependence, cognitive load, or marginalization in plain language and one sentence on why that raises duty-of-care or caution (justify from context; do not stereotype).

Values

Which values are in play (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, dignity, solidarity, etc.)? Map value tension pairs: A vs B — why both matter here.

Harms / Benefits

Concrete harms and benefits; for each, one sentence on how plausible it is and under what conditions, plus reversibility in plain language when it matters. Distinguish predicted vs observed (if user gave history).

Justice / Power

Distribution of burdens and boons. Power asymmetry — who can say no, who bears error cost? Note procedural fairness (voice, consent, appeal).

Options

2+ ethically distinct paths (including do not proceed if plausible). For each:

Option: … — Value fit: … — Residual harm: … — Safeguards:

Recommendation

State a preferred option if the analysis supports one, or conditional guidance. Include dissenting consideration — strongest reason against your recommendation. Add monitoring — what to watch if you proceed.

Read the full file on GitHub · 87 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. 10d ago First seen · 87 lines · 128 tokens per session scan A d8b90fc5630f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ethical-thinking is a skill published in the GitHub repository ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills (8 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 128 tokens to every session and 889 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-08-31.