Thinking Circle Of Competence
Use when a specific claim may lack grounding.
Install
npx skills add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-circle-of-competence -g -a claude-code -y- Repository
- tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills1.7k
- Category
- Engineering
- Updated
- 3mo ago
- License
- MIT
- Context cost
- Lightabout 674 tokens
- Runs scripts
- No, instructions only
What it does
Use when a specific claim may lack grounding. Check evidence boundary, size wrongness cost, then answer, fetch, or abstain, never confabulate.
Circle of Competence
Treat competence as an evidence boundary, not self-image. Answer only when grounded; otherwise fetch, mark uncertainty, or abstain. The failure mode is a fluent fabrication treated as fact.
When to Use
- About to assert a specific fact (API, path, number, config, version behavior) without a citable source from this session.
- The claim is about this codebase or system and you have not read or run the relevant artifact.
- Pattern reconstruction would sound complete but is unconfirmed.
- Cost of a wrong confident answer is material (security, data, irreversible action, trust).
When NOT to Use
- Claim is grounded in something you read, ran, or can cite this session, or is stable universal knowledge, answer without false humility.
- Error cost is trivial and reversible and you will flag the claim as unverified.
- Grounding is one cheap fetch away, fetch first; abstention is not an excuse to skip a check.
- User explicitly wants labeled brainstorming or hypotheticals.
