strategic-thinking

strategic-thinking is a skill for Claude Code from ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills. It costs 121 tokens per session (763 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured method for making choices under constraints by connecting goals, circumstances, available capabilities, options, trade-offs, risks, and next steps.

In plain words
What is it for?
Clarifying intent, assessing the surrounding situation, comparing strategic options, choosing a path, and setting risks and review points.
Why use it?
It helps turn broad goals into a focused choice and makes clear what will not be pursued.

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 Clarifying intent, assessing the surrounding situation, comparing strategic options, choosing a path, and setting risks and review points.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/strategic-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 strategic-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 strategic-thinking

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/strategic-thinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/strategic-thinking.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 121 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 763 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 $0.00121 $0.00763
Opus 5 $0.00060 $0.00381
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00153
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00076

Measured 12d ago against content hash 7a572beb4a18, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

strategic-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 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/strategic-thinking/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.

Strategic Thinking

Strategy is choosing what not to do as much as what to do. End with explicit bets and guardrails.

How to run it with this skill: one clearly headed section per phase in this order: Intent → Landscape → Advantage → Options → Choice → Risks & Cadence. Optional Short story subsection only when Setup calls for it.


Setup (run before starting)

In one short block:

  1. Strategic question — one sentence (e.g. "How should we win in X given Y?")
  2. Default pass — Intent → Landscape → Advantage → Options → Choice → Risks & Cadence (state this line)

If goals, constraints, or non-negotiables are missing, ask at most 3 questions in one message, then proceed. Note any remaining gaps or working guesses in plain language (no bracket tags in Setup).

If the user asked for a memo or deck storyline, add after Risks & Cadence a Short story subsection (5–7 sentences: tension → insight → decision → proof path).


The Phases

Intent

Win definition — what outcome in what timeframe? Non-goals — what is explicitly out of scope?

Landscape

Forces that matter: customers, competition, technology, regulation, economics. Use Implication: bullets — not encyclopedic lists.

Advantage (or Honest gap)

Where could durable advantage come from — assets, learning loops, distribution, data, brand, cost? If none is credible, say so and pivot to options to build advantage.

Options

2–4 mutually distinct strategies or postures. For each:

Option: … — Bet: … — Cost: … — Kill signal:

Choice

Name one primary option (or parallel bets if truly justified). Explain why now and what you are deferring or rejecting.

Risks & Cadence

Top 3 risks with mitigations. 90-day focus, 12-month thesis, and review trigger (metric or event that forces rethink).


Execution Rules

  1. Choice must reference Options; do not introduce a new strategy in the final section without labeling it a revision.
  2. Avoid generic platitudes ("innovate", "customer-centric") without a mechanism.
  3. If information is thin, keep Landscape short and say plainly what is unknown instead of fabricating market facts.

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. 12d ago First seen · 85 lines · 121 tokens per session scan A 7a572beb4a18

Subscribe to this mod's changes

strategic-thinking is a skill published in the GitHub repository ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills (8 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 121 tokens to every session and 763 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.