New: 97,000+ skills indexed from GitHub repos with 100+ stars · every skill safety-checkedBrowse top skillsTop skills
Esc to closeBrowse all skills
Submit a skillBrowse skills
Submit a skillBrowse skills

Agent skill

Concept Fan

by danium in danium/lateral-thinking

Edward de Bono's Concept Fan — climb from the current solution to the concept it serves by asking "what is this a way of doing?", then fan out alternative concepts and concrete implementations for…

MITAuto-check passedDevelopment

Install Concept Fan

skills CLI
$ npx skills add danium/lateral-thinking --skill concept-fan -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install danium/lateral-thinking concept-fan --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/danium/lateral-thinking.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/concept-fan .claude/skills/concept-fan && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
concept-fan
GitHub stars
318
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
782 words
Files
2 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
10
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Edward de Bono's Concept Fan — climb from the current solution to the concept it serves by asking "what is this a way of doing?", then fan out alternative concepts and concrete implementations for…

  • Works in 7 steps: Confirm the target → Climb → Fan out → …
  • The current solution might be answering the wrong question
  • SKILL.md covers What this technique does, Workflow, Honesty mechanics and What NOT to do, plus 1 more section
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Concept Fan is an agent skill from danium/lateral-thinking. Edward de Bono's Concept Fan — climb from the current solution to the concept it serves by asking "what is this a way of doing?", then fan out alternative concepts and concrete implementations for each. Use when the current solution might be answering the wrong question, when all options look like variations of one idea, or to widen a decision before committing. Triggers include "concept fan", "zoom out", "what is this a way of doing", "wrong problem", "widen the options", "abstraction ladder". Do NOT use for…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 2 other files, including reference files (for example `references/worked-example.md`).

It sits in Development. The repository describes itself as: Lateral thinking skills for AI agents - 8 techniques + a router. de Bono for your coding agent. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • The current solution might be answering the wrong question
  • All options look like variations of one idea
  • Widen a decision before committing
  • Include concept fan

Example prompts

  • “what is this a way of doing?”
  • “concept fan”
  • “zoom out”
  • “/concept-fan”

Workflow steps

7 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Confirm the target
  2. Climb
  3. Fan out
  4. Drop down
  5. Mark the obvious branches
  6. Meta-pattern scan
  7. Honest ranking

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit bde713d. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Concept Fan loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3.3k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 149 tokens; SKILL.md has 782 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~149
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.4k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~3.3k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from danium/lateral-thinking at commit bde713d, republished under its MIT licence (© danium). 782 words, ~1,369 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/concept-fan/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
concept-fan
description
Edward de Bono's Concept Fan — climb from the current solution to the concept it serves by asking "what is this a way of doing?", then fan out alternative concepts and concrete implementations for each. Use when the current solution might be answering the wrong question, when all options look like variations of one idea, or to widen a decision before committing. Triggers include "concept fan", "zoom out", "what is this a way of doing", "wrong problem", "widen the options", "abstraction ladder". Do NOT use for analytical work like debugging, code review, or implementation tasks.

Concept Fan

What this technique does

Take the current solution and climb one rung up the ladder of abstraction by asking "what is this a way of doing?" The answer is the direction — the broader purpose the solution was only ever one route toward. From that vantage, fan out alternative concepts that serve the same direction, then drop each promising concept back down into concrete implementations. The move that unlocks everything is the climb: once you name the direction, the current solution stops looking inevitable and becomes just one branch among several.

Source: Edward de Bono, Serious Creativity (1992).

Workflow

Step 1: Confirm the target

A valid target is a current solution or approach — something already on the table, not a blank page. "We send onboarding emails, is that the right move?" is a target. "Give me onboarding ideas" is not; there is nothing to climb from. If the target is a blank page, ask one focused question: "What's the current approach you'd be climbing up from?"

Refuse requests to perform analytical work — debugging, reviewing code, implementing a change — and suggest an analytical approach instead. Redesigning or ideating about such a process is a valid creative target: "reinvent our code-review ritual" is in scope; "review this PR" is not.

Step 2: Climb

Ask "what is this a way of doing?" The answer names the direction the current solution was serving. Then ask the same question of that answer, to climb one more rung.

Two climbs maximum. A third almost always lands on something so broad ("deliver value", "help users") that nothing meaningful fans from it — you have climbed off the problem entirely. Stop at two and stay in contact with the ground.

Step 3: Fan out

At each level you climbed to, list 3–4 alternative concepts that also serve the level directly above. These are siblings of the original solution — other ways of doing the same thing the direction demands. Fan at both levels if both produced a usable direction; the higher fan is usually the more surprising one.

Step 4: Drop down

For the 2–3 most promising alternative concepts, list 2–3 concrete implementations each. This is where the fan earns its keep: an abstract alternative is only interesting once you can see what building it would actually look like.

Step 5: Mark the obvious branches

Some branches will be things anyone would have thought of without the technique. Mark them explicitly. They are not wasted — they validate the fan by showing it maps the real space — but they are not the yield. The yield is the branch you would not have reached from the original solution.

Step 6: Meta-pattern scan

Scan across the branches that landed and name the structural insight out loud. Often the fan reveals that every alternative shares a hidden assumption, or that the original solution was optimizing the wrong variable, or that two distant branches are secretly the same move. State it explicitly — this is frequently the real payoff, more than any single branch.

Show full SKILL.md (283 more words)Show less
Step 7: Honest ranking

Rank the branches you would actually pursue, say which are weak and why, and offer next moves: climb from a different starting solution, fan wider at one level, drop down further on one concept, or stop. Never push the user to commit. The fan widens the options; choosing among them is the user's move, not the technique's.

Honesty mechanics

Prune cosmetic variants, visibly. A fanned concept that circles back to the original solution wearing a new label is not an alternative — it is the same branch. Prune it and show the pruning, for example: "faster onboarding emails" is the original with a coat of paint — pruned. A fan where every branch survives is a tell that the branches were never genuinely different.

Declare a failed fan. If both climbs land on concepts too abstract to fan — "deliver value", "make users happy", "grow the business" — the fan has failed. Say so plainly rather than fanning limp branches off an empty direction. When the direction is too abstract to generate concrete siblings, suggest the analogy technique instead: reasoning from a parallel domain gives traction where climbing lost it.

What NOT to do

  • Don't climb more than twice. A third rung loses contact with the problem and lands on platitudes.
  • Don't fan more than 4 concepts per level. Breadth kills depth — five thin branches are worth less than three you actually drop down into.
  • Don't treat the fan as a decision tool. It widens options; the user narrows them. Ranking is honesty about the branches, not a recommendation to commit.

References

  • references/worked-example.md — a real session showing the full shape: two climbs, fans at each level, a pruned cosmetic branch, and the meta-pattern.

© danium, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (references) in skills/concept-fan of danium/lateral-thinking.

  • SKILL.md
  • references/worked-example.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit bde713d

Compare with similar skills

Concept Fan next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Concept Fan compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Concept Fan this skilldanium/lateral-thinking318—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Finishing a Development Branchobra/superpowers296k5 repos~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Typescript Advanced Typesrolling-scopes/rsschool-app10k24 repos~4.2kAutomated safety check: PassMPL-2.0
PR Babysitteropeninterpreter/openinterpreter69k3 repos~4.2kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Code Review ChecklistshareAI-lab/learn-claude-code78k5 repos~1.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Greplooponyx-dot-app/onyx32k4 repos~3.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

Similar skills

  • Finishing a Development Branch

    obra/superpowers

    Walks the last step of a branch: confirm tests pass, detect the git environment, ask how to integrate, carry out your choice and clean up the worktree.

    296k GitHub starsUsed in 5 repos~1.9k tokens
    DevelopmentAuto-check passed

  • Typescript Advanced Types

    rolling-scopes/rsschool-app

    Master TypeScript's advanced type system including generics, conditional types, mapped types, template literals, and utility types for building type-safe applications.

    10k GitHub starsUsed in 24 repos~4.2k tokens
    DevelopmentAuto-check passed

  • PR Babysitter

    openinterpreter/openinterpreter

    Watches an open GitHub pull request until it merges, handling review comments, diagnosing CI failures and retrying flaky checks along the way.

    69k GitHub starsUsed in 3 repos~4.2k tokens
    DevelopmentAuto-check passed

  • Code Review Checklist

    shareAI-lab/learn-claude-code

    Reviews code against a five-part checklist covering security, correctness, performance, maintainability and testing, and reports findings in a fixed format.

    78k GitHub starsUsed in 5 repos~1.1k tokens
    DevelopmentAuto-check passed

  • Greploop

    onyx-dot-app/onyx

    Iteratively improves a PR (GitHub), MR (GitLab), or shelved changelist (Perforce) until Greptile gives it a 5/5 confidence score with zero unresolved comments.

    32k GitHub starsUsed in 4 repos~3.3k tokens
    DevelopmentAuto-check passed

  • Guidelines

    akash-network/node

    Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes. An agent skill from akash-network/node.

    1.1k GitHub starsUsed in 22 repos~577 tokens
    DevelopmentAuto-check passed

More from danium/lateral-thinking

All 10 skills in this repo

  • Analogy

    danium/lateral-thinking

    Forced Analogy / Structural Transplant — map the problem onto a structurally similar system from a distant domain (immune system, air-traffic control, restaurant kitchen, jazz ensemble) and transfer…

    318 GitHub stars~1.6k tokensUpdated 24 days ago
    Auto-check passed

  • Inversion

    danium/lateral-thinking

    Assumption Inversion — list the assumptions behind the current approach and flip each one, then ask where the flipped version could actually be true.

    318 GitHub stars~1.5k tokensUpdated 24 days ago
    Auto-check passed

  • Provocation

    danium/lateral-thinking

    Edward de Bono's Provocation (Po) technique — state something deliberately wrong or absurd about the problem, then extract useful "movement" from it instead of judging it.

    318 GitHub stars~1.7k tokensUpdated 24 days ago
    Auto-check passed

  • Random Stimulus

    danium/lateral-thinking

    Edward de Bono's Random Stimulus technique — force-fit a random unrelated object, place, or phenomenon onto a creative target to break familiar association patterns.

    318 GitHub stars~2.3k tokensUpdated 24 days ago
    Auto-check passed

  • Scamper

    danium/lateral-thinking

    SCAMPER (Bob Eberle) — run one existing idea, product, or process through seven systematic transformations - Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Put to other use, Eliminate, Reverse/Rearrange.

    318 GitHub stars~1.3k tokensUpdated 24 days ago
    Auto-check passed

  • Six Hats

    danium/lateral-thinking

    Parallel thinking with six enforced perspectives, based on Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats® method - examine one decision through sequential passes for facts, feelings, risks, benefits…

    318 GitHub stars~1.4k tokensUpdated 24 days ago
    Auto-check passed

Categories

Questions about Concept Fan

What does Concept Fan do?

Edward de Bono's Concept Fan — climb from the current solution to the concept it serves by asking "what is this a way of doing?", then fan out alternative concepts and concrete implementations for…. Concept Fan is an agent skill from danium/lateral-thinking.", then fan out alternative concepts and concrete implementations for each.

When should I use Concept Fan?

Concept Fan fits situations like: the current solution might be answering the wrong question; all options look like variations of one idea; widen a decision before committing; include concept fan.

How do I install Concept Fan in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add danium/lateral-thinking --skill concept-fan -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/concept-fan in danium/lateral-thinking) into .claude/skills/concept-fan in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Concept Fan in Codex?

Run `npx skills add danium/lateral-thinking --skill concept-fan -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/concept-fan in danium/lateral-thinking) into .agents/skills/concept-fan in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Concept Fan in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add danium/lateral-thinking --skill concept-fan -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/concept-fan, .gemini/skills/concept-fan, .github/skills/concept-fan and .opencode/skills/concept-fan in your project.

What does Concept Fan need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Concept Fan is instructions for the agent only.

Does Concept Fan access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Concept Fan safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Concept Fan use?

Concept Fan is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Concept Fan use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.5k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 1.9k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Concept Fan?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Concept Fan: Finishing a Development Branch (obra/superpowers, 296k stars), Typescript Advanced Types (rolling-scopes/rsschool-app, 10k stars), PR Babysitter (openinterpreter/openinterpreter, 69k stars) and Code Review Checklist (shareAI-lab/learn-claude-code, 78k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Concept Fan?

danium (a GitHub user) maintains it in danium/lateral-thinking, which has 318 GitHub stars. The repository holds 10 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 13, 2026.

Source: danium/lateral-thinking on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.