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Agent skill

Inversion

by danium in 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.

MITAuto-check passedDevelopment

Install Inversion

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install danium/lateral-thinking inversion --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/inversion .claude/skills/inversion && 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
inversion
GitHub stars
318
Token cost
~1.5k tokens
SKILL.md length
855 words
Files
2 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
10
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

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

  • Works in 7 steps: Confirm the target → Extract the assumptions → Flip each assumption → …
  • Requirements encode beliefs nobody has questioned
  • 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

Inversion is an agent skill from 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. Use when requirements encode beliefs nobody has questioned, when a design feels inevitable, or when incumbents all share one blind spot. Triggers include "invert", "flip it", "flip the assumption", "reverse the premise", "what if the opposite were true", "challenge the assumption". Do NOT use for analytical work like debugging, code review, or implementation tasks.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.5k 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

  • Requirements encode beliefs nobody has questioned
  • A design feels inevitable
  • Incumbents all share one blind spot
  • Flip the assumption

Example prompts

  • “invert”
  • “flip it”
  • “flip the assumption”
  • “/inversion”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Confirm the target
  2. Extract the assumptions
  3. Flip each assumption
  4. Hunt for where the flip is true
  5. Develop the survivors
  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

Inversion loads about 1.5k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3.9k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 132 tokens; SKILL.md has 855 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~132
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.5k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~3.9k

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). 855 words, ~1,455 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/inversion/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
inversion
description
Assumption Inversion — list the assumptions behind the current approach and flip each one, then ask where the flipped version could actually be true. Use when requirements encode beliefs nobody has questioned, when a design feels inevitable, or when incumbents all share one blind spot. Triggers include "invert", "flip it", "flip the assumption", "reverse the premise", "what if the opposite were true", "challenge the assumption". Do NOT use for analytical work like debugging, code review, or implementation tasks.

Assumption Inversion

What this technique does

Every approach rests on a stack of unstated beliefs — about who the user is, what they value, how the thing gets delivered, in what order, at what price. List those beliefs, flip each one into its opposite, then ask the sharp question: where is the flipped version already true? Most flips are dead ends, and naming them dead is part of the work. The two or three flips that turn out to be true somewhere are where a non-obvious direction hides — the incumbents never looked there because the original belief felt like a law of nature.

Source: the classical dialectic method of arguing a position by its negation; popularized for business by "invert, always invert" (Carl Jacobi, via Charlie Munger) and by Edward de Bono's reversal method in Lateral Thinking (1970).

Workflow

Step 1: Confirm the target

A valid target is a design, plan, or approach whose assumptions you can list: a product strategy, a go-to-market plan, a pricing model, a workflow you are about to build, an onboarding sequence. If the target is unclear, ask one focused question — "What's the current approach, and what feels locked-in about it?"

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: Extract the assumptions

List 5–8 assumptions behind the current approach. Aim for the load-bearing ones, not decorations. These prompt categories help you cover the space rather than list five versions of the same belief:

  • The user — who they are, what they already know, what they can be trusted to do.
  • The value — what the thing is actually worth, and to whom.
  • The channel — where it reaches people and where they meet it.
  • The sequence — what has to happen first, second, last.
  • The price — who pays, how much, and when.
  • The effort split — who does the work, the provider or the user.
Step 3: Flip each assumption

Turn each assumption into its strongest plausible opposite — not a strawman. "Users want it fast" flips to "users want it slow and deliberate," not "users want it broken." A good flip is one a reasonable person could defend. If the flip is obviously stupid, you flipped it lazily; find the version a competitor could actually build a business on.

Step 4: Hunt for where the flip is true

For each flip, ask the load-bearing question: "In what market, segment, or era is this flip TRUE? Who profits from it today?" Name a real place it holds — a customer type, an industry, a historical moment, an existing product. If you cannot name one honestly, the flip is dead. Say so and move on. Do not manufacture a fake "where."

Step 5: Develop the survivors

Take the 2–3 flips that had a live answer in Step 4 and develop them into concrete directions. What would the approach look like if you built it around the flipped belief? Where the flip already works for someone else, borrow the mechanism.

Show full SKILL.md (334 more words)Show less
Step 6: Meta-pattern scan

Scan across the flips that survived. Is there a structural insight — one belief that several assumptions all secretly depended on, one axis where the whole approach is fragile? State it explicitly. This cross-flip observation is often the real finding, larger than any single flipped assumption.

Step 7: Honest ranking

Rank the surviving directions, weakest called out as weak and why. Mark the dead flips as dead so the user sees the whole map. Then offer the next move — extract more assumptions, go deeper on one direction, switch technique, or stop — and never push the user to commit. The technique is divergent; convergence belongs to the user.

Honesty mechanics

Dead flips stay visible. A flip with no honest answer to "where is this true?" is marked dead explicitly, not quietly dropped. The dead flips are evidence the exercise was genuine.

Something usually survives inversion unscathed. At least one assumption, when flipped, has no live answer anywhere — the original belief really is close to a law for this problem. Say so. That is a finding too: it tells you where not to waste effort.

Every flip working is a red flag. An inversion session where every flip "turns out to be true somewhere" is a sign the flips were strawmen or the "wheres" were manufactured. Expect one or two flips to die.

What NOT to do

  • Don't flip into absurdity. Flipping "users want it fast" into "users want it broken" is a different technique's job (that is provocation's territory). Inversion flips into plausible opposites a competitor could defend.
  • Don't stop at the flip. The flip alone is a debating trick. The value is in Step 4 — hunting for where the flipped belief is already true. A flip with no "where" hunt is half the technique.
  • Don't flip more than 8 assumptions. Depth beats coverage. Better to develop three survivors fully than to list twelve flips and hunt none of them.

References

© 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/inversion of danium/lateral-thinking.

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

Open the folder on GitHubat commit bde713d

Compare with similar skills

Inversion 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.

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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

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Categories

Questions about Inversion

What does Inversion do?

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

When should I use Inversion?

Inversion fits situations like: requirements encode beliefs nobody has questioned; A design feels inevitable; incumbents all share one blind spot; flip the assumption.

How do I install Inversion in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Inversion in Codex?

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

Can I use Inversion 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 inversion -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/inversion, .gemini/skills/inversion, .github/skills/inversion and .opencode/skills/inversion in your project.

What does Inversion need to run?

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

Does Inversion 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 Inversion 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 Inversion use?

Inversion 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 Inversion use?

About 1.5k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.8k 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 2.5k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Inversion?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Inversion: 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 Inversion?

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.