# Thinking Circle Of Competence

Use when a specific claim may lack grounding.

- Repository: https://github.com/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills (1690 stars)
- Category: Engineering
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-08-07
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-circle-of-competence -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-circle-of-competence -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-circle-of-competence -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-circle-of-competence -g -a gemini-cli -y`
Claude Code plugin marketplace: `/plugin marketplace add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills`

## Description

Use when a specific claim may lack grounding. Check evidence boundary, size wrongness cost, then answer, fetch, or abstain, never confabulate.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# 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.

## Procedure

The rest: https://github.com/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/blob/HEAD/skills/thinking-circle-of-competence/SKILL.md