agentleFS
songjiun10-collabsongjiun10-collab/Senior-thinking-skills/clarify-the-real-problem/SKILL.md

clarify-the-real-problem

Skill87 starsChanged 32 days agoMITView on GitHub

Dig out the actual goal behind a request before building anything. Use when a request is ambiguous, when the literal ask smells like an X-Y problem (they asked for a solution, not a problem), or when a wrong interpretation would waste significant work. Also use when the user says "still thinking about it", "what's the best way to do this?", or hands over a vague one-liner that implies hours of work.

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

1 rule. About 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈1

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 0

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Distinctive:

    Read the file matching the model actually running before applying this skill.

    line 22

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Clarify the Real Problem (router)

This skill is tuned per model. Pick the file that matches the model actually running, and apply it in full — the questions to ask are the same everywhere, but how literally to read the request, and how much to surface versus resolve silently, differs by tier.

ModelFile
Claude Opus 5.5opus-5-5.md
Claude Fable 5.1fable-5-1.md
Claude Sonnet 5sonnet-5.md
Claude Sonnet 5.5sonnet-5-5.md
Claude Haiku 5.5haiku-5-5.md
OpenAI GPT-6 Astragpt-6-astra.md
OpenAI GPT-6 Solgpt-6-sol.md
OpenAI GPT-6.1 Solgpt-6-1-sol.md
OpenAI GPT-6 Lunagpt-6-luna.md

Read the file matching the model actually running before applying this skill.

Running a model not listed above (an older generation, a different model family entirely)? sonnet-5.md carries the fullest general-purpose version of the underlying procedure — read that one rather than skipping this skill.

Download now (ZIP)

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