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Agent skill

Six Hats

by danium in 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…

MITAuto-check passedDevelopment

Install Six Hats

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install danium/lateral-thinking six-hats --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/six-hats .claude/skills/six-hats && 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
six-hats
GitHub stars
318
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
786 words
Files
3 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
10
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

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…

  • Works in 3 steps: Confirm the target → Run the six passes in fixed order → Offer next moves
  • A decision is being made too fast
  • 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

Six Hats is an agent skill from 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, alternatives, and synthesis, never blending them. Use when a decision is being made too fast or from one angle, when everyone agrees suspiciously quickly, when the discussion mixes emotions with data, or for "six hats", "thinking hats", "look at this from every angle", "structured devil's advocate". Do NOT use for analytical…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 3 other files, including reference files (for example `references/hats-guide.md` and `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

  • A decision is being made too fast
  • Everyone agrees suspiciously quickly
  • The discussion mixes emotions with data
  • Look at this from every angle

Example prompts

  • “six hats”
  • “thinking hats”
  • “look at this from every angle”
  • “/six-hats”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Confirm the target
  2. Run the six passes in fixed order
  3. Offer next moves

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

Six Hats loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs, and up to ~4.9k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 146 tokens; SKILL.md has 786 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~146
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
~4.9k

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). 786 words, ~1,421 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/six-hats/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 2 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
six-hats
description
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, alternatives, and synthesis, never blending them. Use when a decision is being made too fast or from one angle, when everyone agrees suspiciously quickly, when the discussion mixes emotions with data, or for "six hats", "thinking hats", "look at this from every angle", "structured devil's advocate". Do NOT use for analytical work like debugging, code review, or implementation tasks.

Six Thinking Hats

What this technique does

Take one decision and run it through six deliberately separated perspectives, one at a time. Each pass wears a single "hat": facts, feelings, risks, benefits, alternatives, then synthesis. The power is in the separation — a group that argues all six dimensions at once collapses into whoever talks loudest, but a group that examines facts only, then feelings only, surfaces things the argument would have buried. It converts a tug-of-war into six clean passes over the same ground.

Based on Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats® method (Six Thinking Hats, 1985). Six Thinking Hats is a registered trademark of the de Bono Group; this skill is an independent educational implementation.

Workflow

Step 1: Confirm the target

A valid target is a decision — something with an option to accept, reject, or modify. "Should we ship X in v1?", "Do we adopt this dependency?", "Which of these two rollout plans?" all qualify. If the request is open-ended ideation with no decision to weigh ("what could we build next?"), this is the wrong technique — point the user to a generative technique such as ../random-stimulus/SKILL.md instead. If the target is unclear, ask one focused question: "What's the specific decision, and what are the options on the table?"

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

Step 2: Run the six passes in fixed order

Run all six, each under its own clear heading, never blending. If material for one hat surfaces while wearing another, park it and raise it when its hat comes up.

  • White — facts only. State only what is verifiable. Name the missing data explicitly rather than guessing at it. No opinions, no interpretation.
  • Red — gut reactions. One line each, no justification permitted. The instant "this feels wrong" or "I'd be relieved" — recorded, not defended. Justifying a feeling turns it into a Black or Yellow point; don't.
  • Black — risks and failure modes. Each risk tied to a mechanism — how it actually goes wrong — not a vibe. "This could fail" is not a Black-hat point; "this fails if traffic doubles because the queue is unbounded" is.
  • Yellow — benefits and best-case. Each benefit tied to a mechanism too. Not "this would be great" but "this cuts onboarding time because the config step disappears."
  • Green — alternatives and modifications. Minimum three. At least one must abandon the premise of the decision entirely rather than tweak it.
  • Blue — synthesis. What did the hats disagree about? What piece of information would change the answer? End with a recommendation carrying a stated confidence level.
Show full SKILL.md (330 more words)Show less
Step 3: Offer next moves

Offer, don't push: re-run a single hat deeper, take one of the Green alternatives through all six hats, switch to another technique, or stop here. Never pressure the user to commit to the recommendation.

Honesty mechanics

The Red hat must bite. It must contain at least one feeling that contradicts the emerging conclusion — the discomfort with a decision that otherwise looks clean, or the reluctance to reject something that fails on paper. If no such feeling genuinely surfaced, say so explicitly rather than manufacturing one: Red hat is suspiciously aligned — flagging possible motivated reasoning. A Red hat where every feeling agrees with the answer is a tell.

The Blue hat must not paper over the split. Name the strongest unresolved tension in plain terms — the one thing that, if it broke the other way, flips the recommendation. Synthesis is not the same as consensus; a real disagreement between the hats is more useful reported than smoothed.

What NOT to do

  • Don't blend the hats. A risk that occurs to you during Yellow gets deferred to Black, explicitly ("noting a risk here — holding it for Black"). Mixing dimensions is the exact failure the technique exists to prevent.
  • Don't let Blue introduce new material. Blue synthesizes what the other five hats produced. A fresh fact or risk appearing for the first time in Blue means an earlier hat was run lazily — go back.
  • Don't run this on a problem with no decision in it. No option to accept or reject means no target. Redirect to a generative technique.
  • Don't skip Red because "feelings aren't data." Surfacing the feelings is the hat's job. Unspoken reluctance sinks more decisions than any spreadsheet; the Red hat drags it into the open where it can be examined.

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 2 other files (references) in skills/six-hats of danium/lateral-thinking.

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

Open the folder on GitHubat commit bde713d

Compare with similar skills

Six Hats 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.

Six Hats compared with similar skills
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Six Hats this skilldanium/lateral-thinking318—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
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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 Six Hats

What does Six Hats do?

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…. Six Hats is an agent skill from 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, alternatives, and synthesis, never blending them.

When should I use Six Hats?

Six Hats fits situations like: A decision is being made too fast; everyone agrees suspiciously quickly; the discussion mixes emotions with data; look at this from every angle.

How do I install Six Hats in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Six Hats in Codex?

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

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

What does Six Hats need to run?

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

Does Six Hats 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 Six Hats 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 Six Hats use?

Six Hats 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 Six Hats use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.7k 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 3.5k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Six Hats?

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

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.