Agent skill

Systems Awareness Iceberg

by GarethManning in GarethManning/education-agent-skills

Map a current event below the surface into patterns, structures, and mental models.

Custom licenceAuto-check passed

Install Systems Awareness Iceberg

skills CLI
$ npx skills add GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill systems-awareness-iceberg -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install GarethManning/education-agent-skills systems-awareness-iceberg --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/GarethManning/education-agent-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/systems-thinking/systems-awareness-iceberg .claude/skills/systems-awareness-iceberg && 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
systems-awareness-iceberg
GitHub stars
840
Token cost
~2.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
564 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
160
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Custom licence

At a glance

Map a current event below the surface into patterns, structures, and mental models.

  • Works in 5 steps: Treating the first explanation as the… → Stopping at behaviour. "Students don't… → Skipping power and history. Structures… → …
  • Team needs systemic understanding before action
  • SKILL.md covers What This Skill Does, Evidence Foundation, Input Schema and Prompt, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Systems Awareness Iceberg is an agent skill from GarethManning/education-agent-skills. Map a current event below the surface into patterns, structures, and mental models. Use when a class or team needs systemic understanding before action.

Its SKILL.md is about 2.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

The repository describes itself as: 165 evidence-grounded AI skills for teachers, school leaders and EdTech builders—pedagogy, learning science, curriculum, assessment and regeneration. Claude, Codex and Hermes.

When your agent uses it

  • Team needs systemic understanding before action

Example prompts

  • “/systems-awareness-iceberg”

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Treating the first explanation as the cause. Keep multiple hypotheses alive until evidence narrows them.
  2. Stopping at behaviour. "Students don't care" is not a systems explanation; it is usually a mental model to examine.
  3. Skipping power and history. Structures include rules, resources, status, institutional memory, and who gets heard.
  4. Turning the iceberg into blame with better vocabulary. The tool should increase compassion and agency, not produce more elegant judgement.
  5. Jumping straight to solutions. Use the iceberg to understand; use later tools to choose action.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 6bbbce4. 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

Systems Awareness Iceberg loads about 2.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 45 tokens; SKILL.md has 564 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~45
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.4k

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

Its licence (Custom licence) doesn't allow us to republish the file, so here is its outline and opening line. It has 564 words (~2,378 tokens).

“Helps educators and students investigate a visible event by moving below the surface into repeated patterns, enabling structures, and underlying mental models. The skill is designed for compassionate systems awareness: it slows the rush to blame or fix, asks what…”

— opening of SKILL.md by GarethManning, Custom licence
name
systems-awareness-iceberg
disable-model-invocation
false
user-invocable
true
effort
medium
skill_id
systems-thinking/systems-awareness-iceberg
skill_name
Systems Awareness Iceberg
domain
systems-thinking
version
1.0
evidence_strength
moderate
evidence_sources
Center for Systems Awareness (2022) — Guided Iceberg and Aspirational Iceberg practitioner resources, Senge (1990) — The Fifth Discipline (systems thinking…
output_schema.type
object

Read the full SKILL.md on GitHub

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/systems-thinking/systems-awareness-iceberg of GarethManning/education-agent-skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 6bbbce4

Compare with similar skills

Systems Awareness Iceberg 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.

Systems Awareness Iceberg compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Systems Awareness Iceberg this skillGarethManning/education-agent-skills840—~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Eventscoreyhaines31/marketingskills54k—~3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Attack Surface Mappingyaklang/hack-skills2.4k—~2.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Hns Oss Docs Structure Mapmodu-ai/moai-adk1.2k—~866Automated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Feature Maponyx-dot-app/onyx32k—~459Automated safety check: PassCustom licence
Token Mapnexu-io/open-design100k—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Questions about Systems Awareness Iceberg

What does Systems Awareness Iceberg do?

Map a current event below the surface into patterns, structures, and mental models. Systems Awareness Iceberg is an agent skill from GarethManning/education-agent-skills. Map a current event below the surface into patterns, structures, and mental models.

When should I use Systems Awareness Iceberg?

Systems Awareness Iceberg fits situations like: team needs systemic understanding before action.

How do I install Systems Awareness Iceberg in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill systems-awareness-iceberg -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/systems-thinking/systems-awareness-iceberg in GarethManning/education-agent-skills) into .claude/skills/systems-awareness-iceberg in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Systems Awareness Iceberg in Codex?

Run `npx skills add GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill systems-awareness-iceberg -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/systems-thinking/systems-awareness-iceberg in GarethManning/education-agent-skills) into .agents/skills/systems-awareness-iceberg in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Systems Awareness Iceberg 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 GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill systems-awareness-iceberg -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/systems-awareness-iceberg, .gemini/skills/systems-awareness-iceberg, .github/skills/systems-awareness-iceberg and .opencode/skills/systems-awareness-iceberg in your project.

What does Systems Awareness Iceberg need to run?

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

Does Systems Awareness Iceberg 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 Systems Awareness Iceberg 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 Systems Awareness Iceberg use?

Systems Awareness Iceberg has a licence file (the repository's licence) that doesn't match a standard licence. Read it on GitHub before reusing the skill.

How many tokens does Systems Awareness Iceberg use?

About 2.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 9.5k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Systems Awareness Iceberg?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Systems Awareness Iceberg: Events (coreyhaines31/marketingskills, 54k stars), Attack Surface Mapping (yaklang/hack-skills, 2.4k stars), Hns Oss Docs Structure Map (modu-ai/moai-adk, 1.2k stars) and Feature Map (onyx-dot-app/onyx, 32k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Systems Awareness Iceberg?

GarethManning (a GitHub user) maintains it in GarethManning/education-agent-skills, which has 840 GitHub stars. The repository holds 160 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on August 28, 2026.

Source: GarethManning/education-agent-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.