Agent skill

Judith Butler

by K-Dense-AI in K-Dense-AI/mimeographs

A skill your agent uses to apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher, gender theory, Gender Trouble).

MITAuto-check passed

Install Judith Butler

skills CLI
$ npx skills add K-Dense-AI/mimeographs --skill judith-butler -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install K-Dense-AI/mimeographs judith-butler --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/K-Dense-AI/mimeographs.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/mimeographs/judith-butler .claude/skills/judith-butler && 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
judith-butler
GitHub stars
129
Token cost
~1.6k tokens
SKILL.md length
814 words
Files
72 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
60
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses to apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher, gender theory, Gender Trouble).

  • Works in 4 steps: Identify the "essential" trait being… → Map the stylized, repeated acts and… → Locate the "scene of constraint"—the… → …
  • Apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher
  • SKILL.md covers Core principles, How Judith Butler reasons, Applying the frameworks and Anti-patterns they push against, plus 1 more section
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Judith Butler is an agent skill from K-Dense-AI/mimeographs. Use this skill to apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher, gender theory, Gender Trouble). Trigger this skill whenever the user is discussing gender performativity, identity politics, right-wing populism, anti-gender movements, queer theory, bodily autonomy, or the intersection of democracy and marginalized lives. Reach for it when analyzing systemic power, social construction, collective vulnerability, or authoritarian rhetoric. It helps deconstruct essentialist assumptions, reframe…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.6k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 74 other files, including reference files (for example `AGENTS.md`, `_workspace/agents_output.e584bd6c.json` and `_workspace/clustered_corpus.e584bd6c.json`).

The repository describes itself as: Ready-to-use agent skills that clone the thinking of founders, philosophers, and scientists into your agent. Generated with K-Dense-AI/mimeo. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher
  • Gender Trouble)
  • This skill whenever the user is discussing gender performativity
  • Identity politics

Example prompts

  • “/judith-butler”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Identify the "essential" trait being assumed (e.g., gender, natural hierarchy).
  2. Map the stylized, repeated acts and social sanctions that actually produce this trait.
  3. Locate the "scene of constraint"—the rules governing the performance.
  4. Find the agency: look for where improvisation, failure, or creative repetition of these rules opens up new possibilities.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit a38f5fc. 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

Judith Butler loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs, and up to ~5.4k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 161 tokens; SKILL.md has 814 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~161
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.6k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~5.4k

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

The full file from K-Dense-AI/mimeographs at commit a38f5fc, republished under its MIT licence (© K-Dense-AI). 814 words, ~1,646 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/judith-butler/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 71 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
judith-butler
description
Use this skill to apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher, gender theory, Gender Trouble). Trigger this skill whenever the user is discussing gender performativity, identity politics, right-wing populism, anti-gender movements, queer theory, bodily autonomy, or the intersection of democracy and marginalized lives. Reach for it when analyzing systemic power, social construction, collective vulnerability, or authoritarian rhetoric. It helps deconstruct essentialist assumptions, reframe anxieties about identity, and build ethical frameworks based on material interdependence rather than mere sympathy.

Thinking like Judith Butler

Judith Butler's thought fundamentally destabilizes the categories we take for granted as "natural" or "essential." Rather than accepting identity as an internal truth that we merely express, their work reveals how identities are actively produced through the repetition of social norms. Their thinking bridges the linguistic and the material, examining how power operates not just by oppressing subjects, but by bringing them into being.

In recent years, their focus has expanded to the ethics of cohabitation, collective vulnerability, and the rise of authoritarianism. They analyze how reactionary movements weaponize concepts like "gender" to absorb systemic economic anxieties. Reach for this skill whenever you are analyzing identity formation, systemic power dynamics, right-wing populism, bodily autonomy, or the ethical obligations we owe to strangers.

Core principles

  • Gender is a Performative Accomplishment: Identity is not an innate essence but a reality tenuously constituted in time through a stylized repetition of acts.
  • Ethical Obligation Stems from Interdependence: Our ethical duties to others rely not on feeling sympathy or likeness, but on the unchosen reality of our shared material vulnerability.
  • The Assault on Gender is an Assault on Democracy: Restricting bodily autonomy and self-definition is a core tactic of rising authoritarianism, making gender freedom integral to democratic struggle.
  • Joyful Vision Over Righteous Infighting: To counter authoritarianism, progressive movements must articulate a tangible, passionate, and joyful vision of freedom rather than getting bogged down in critique.

For detailed rationale and quotes, see references/principles.md.

How Judith Butler reasons

Butler reasons by inversion and deconstruction. When presented with a "natural" fact (like the gender binary), they ask: What historical and social forces were required to produce the illusion of this natural fact? They dismiss the idea that there is a pre-existing "doer behind the deed," focusing instead on how the deed creates the doer.

When analyzing political movements, they look past surface rhetoric to identify the underlying psychological and structural mechanisms. They frequently employ the mental model of the Psychosocial Phantasm to explain how empty concepts are turned into demonic threats to absorb economic anxieties. They also look for the Inadvertent Confession, noting how oppressive regimes often accuse marginalized groups of the exact rights-stripping behaviors the regime itself is committing. For a full catalog of these lenses, see references/mental-models.md.

Applying the frameworks

The Performative Constitution of the Subject

When to use: Analyzing how social norms shape individual identity and agency.

  1. Identify the "essential" trait being assumed (e.g., gender, natural hierarchy).
  2. Map the stylized, repeated acts and social sanctions that actually produce this trait.
  3. Locate the "scene of constraint"—the rules governing the performance.
  4. Find the agency: look for where improvisation, failure, or creative repetition of these rules opens up new possibilities.
Critique of the Psychosocial Phantasm

When to use: Deconstructing moral panics or reactionary political rhetoric.

  1. Identify the empty umbrella term being scapegoated (e.g., "gender ideology").
  2. Trace the actual source of societal anxiety (e.g., neoliberal economic devastation, strategic state abandonment).
  3. Analyze how the phantasm displaces this anxiety, offering a false "fantasy of restoration" to patriarchal or colonial power structures.
Show full SKILL.md (303 more words)Show less
Ethics of Cohabitation and Interdependence

When to use: Formulating ethical responses to global crises, marginalization, or conflict.

  1. Reject frameworks that require "likeness" or shared identity to justify empathy.
  2. Ground the ethical obligation in shared material vulnerability (sharing air, infrastructure, surfaces of the world).
  3. Formulate collective responsibilities aimed at overcoming conditions of induced precarity.

For full framework details, see references/frameworks.md.

Anti-patterns they push against

  • The Expressive Model of Identity: Assuming that behaviors and gestures are expressions of a pre-existing internal core, rather than the acts that construct that core.
  • Scapegoating 'Gender' for Systemic Failures: Treating cultural shifts as the cause of societal decay, which misdirects anger away from corporate power and deregulated capitalism.
  • Restricting Sympathy to Likeness: Basing solidarity only on shared identity, which thwarts our ability to respond ethically to those who are different or distant.
  • Trans-Exclusionary Feminism: Relying on biological essentialism to define womanhood, which reproduces the very binary hierarchies feminism seeks to dismantle.
  • Righteous Infighting: Allowing progressive movements to become overly prescriptive and critical, failing to make freedom "exciting and sexy."

How to use this skill in conversation

When the user is grappling with issues of identity, political backlash, or ethical obligations to marginalized groups, channel Butler's analytical lens. Instead of accepting categories at face value, help the user deconstruct them.

If the user is analyzing a moral panic, introduce the "Psychosocial Phantasm" by name and help them map the displaced anxieties. If they are discussing identity, apply the concept of "Gender Performativity" to show how reality is brought into being through repeated acts. Always ground ethical advice in "Interdependence" and shared vulnerability rather than mere sympathy. Cite the concepts clearly (e.g., "Judith Butler frames this as an 'Inadvertent Confession'...") but do not adopt a first-person persona. Focus on applying the structural critique to the user's specific context.

© K-Dense-AI, 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 71 other files (references) in mimeographs/judith-butler of K-Dense-AI/mimeographs.

  • SKILL.md
  • AGENTS.md
  • _workspace/agents_output.e584bd6c.json
  • _workspace/clustered_corpus.e584bd6c.json
  • _workspace/discovery/books.json
  • _workspace/discovery/essays.json
  • _workspace/discovery/frameworks.json
  • _workspace/discovery/interviews.json
  • _workspace/discovery/letters.json
  • _workspace/discovery/papers.json
  • _workspace/discovery/podcasts.json
  • _workspace/discovery/ranked_sources.e584bd6c.json
  • _workspace/discovery/talks.json
  • _workspace/distilled/src_000.e584bd6c.json
  • _workspace/distilled/src_001.e584bd6c.json
  • _workspace/distilled/src_002.e584bd6c.json
  • _workspace/distilled/src_003.e584bd6c.json
  • _workspace/distilled/src_004.e584bd6c.json
  • … and 54 more

Open the folder on GitHubat commit a38f5fc

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Questions about Judith Butler

What does Judith Butler do?

A skill your agent uses to apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher, gender theory, Gender Trouble). Judith Butler is an agent skill from K-Dense-AI/mimeographs. Use this skill to apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher, gender theory, Gender Trouble).

When should I use Judith Butler?

Judith Butler fits situations like: apply the analytical lens of Judith Butler (American philosopher; gender Trouble); this skill whenever the user is discussing gender performativity; identity politics.

How do I install Judith Butler in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add K-Dense-AI/mimeographs --skill judith-butler -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (mimeographs/judith-butler in K-Dense-AI/mimeographs) into .claude/skills/judith-butler in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Judith Butler in Codex?

Run `npx skills add K-Dense-AI/mimeographs --skill judith-butler -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (mimeographs/judith-butler in K-Dense-AI/mimeographs) into .agents/skills/judith-butler in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Judith Butler 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 K-Dense-AI/mimeographs --skill judith-butler -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/judith-butler, .gemini/skills/judith-butler, .github/skills/judith-butler and .opencode/skills/judith-butler in your project.

What does Judith Butler need to run?

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

Does Judith Butler 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 Judith Butler 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 Judith Butler use?

Judith Butler 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 Judith Butler use?

About 1.6k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.6k 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 3.7k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Judith Butler?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Judith Butler: Analytics Tracking (alirezarezvani/claude-skills, 28k stars), Analytics (getsentry/sentry, 46k stars), Debugging MCP Analytics (PostHog/posthog, 40k stars) and Opik Analytics Instrumentation (comet-ml/opik, 22k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Judith Butler?

K-Dense-AI (a GitHub organization) maintains it in K-Dense-AI/mimeographs, which has 129 GitHub stars. The repository holds 60 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on August 18, 2026.

Source: K-Dense-AI/mimeographs on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.