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Agent skill

Thinking Ooda

by tjboudreaux in tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills

Use under time pressure when the situation is still changing and you must act before certainty — cycle Observe→Orient→Decide→Act on ~70% confidence, then re-observe.

MITAuto-check passed

Install Thinking Ooda

skills CLI
$ npx skills add tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-ooda -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills thinking-ooda --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/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/thinking-ooda .claude/skills/thinking-ooda && 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
thinking-ooda
GitHub stars
1.6k
Token cost
~790 tokens
SKILL.md length
432 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
26
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Use under time pressure when the situation is still changing and you must act before certainty — cycle Observe→Orient→Decide→Act on ~70% confidence, then re-observe.

  • Works in 6 steps: Observe (time-boxed): gather the… → Orient: match observations to a pattern… → Decide: pick one reversible action that… → …
  • SKILL.md covers When to Use, When NOT to Use, Procedure and Output, plus 1 more section
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Thinking Ooda is an agent skill from tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills. Use under time pressure when the situation is still changing and you must act before certainty — cycle Observe→Orient→Decide→Act on ~70% confidence, then re-observe.

Its SKILL.md is about 790 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: 28 eval-informed mental models and critical-thinking skills for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Cursor, and other Agent Skills-compatible tools. The licence is MIT.

Example prompts

  • “/thinking-ooda”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Observe (time-boxed): gather the cheapest high-signal state now — metrics, logs, alerts, recent deploys/config, and feedback from the last…
  2. Orient: match observations to a pattern and form ≥2 candidate explanations. Update or discard the mental model when data contradicts it…
  3. Decide: pick one reversible action that tests the leading hypothesis. State confidence (~70% threshold for reversible moves), the…
  4. Act: execute once, decisively, with a known rollback or degrade path.
  5. Re-observe immediately: compare outcome to prediction within the time box; feed the result into the next Observe. Loop until stable or…
  6. Stop condition: exit the loop when the system is stable, the remaining work is static analysis, or the next step requires irreversible…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 7b8fece. 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

Thinking Ooda loads about 790 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 45 tokens; SKILL.md has 432 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
~790

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 tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills at commit 7b8fece, republished under its MIT licence (© tjboudreaux). 432 words, ~790 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/thinking-ooda/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
thinking-ooda
description
Use under time pressure when the situation is still changing and you must act before certainty — cycle Observe→Orient→Decide→Act on ~70% confidence, then re-observe.
disable-model-invocation
true

OODA Loop

Core rule: For reversible moves under time pressure, act on ~70% confidence, then immediately re-observe. Cycle faster than the situation compounds; a late perfect plan loses to a fast loop.

When to Use

  • Incident response, outage, or ongoing degradation where state is still moving.
  • Debugging a moving target (intermittent failure, live traffic shift).
  • Any time-bounded decision where waiting for full certainty costs more than a reversible action.

When NOT to Use

  • The situation is static and you have time — deliberate analysis or a hypothesis differential wins.
  • The next action is irreversible or high blast-radius — raise the evidence bar; 70% is not enough.
  • You can cheaply localize the cause (read the failing diff, log, or metric) — test that hypothesis directly instead of looping in the dark.
  • There is no time pressure and no changing environment — OODA adds churn without value.

Procedure

  1. Observe (time-boxed): gather the cheapest high-signal state now — metrics, logs, alerts, recent deploys/config, and feedback from the last action. Cap the window; do not collect forever.
  2. Orient: match observations to a pattern and form ≥2 candidate explanations. Update or discard the mental model when data contradicts it; refuse single-hypothesis lock.
  3. Decide: pick one reversible action that tests the leading hypothesis. State confidence (~70% threshold for reversible moves), the predicted effect, the observation you will check next, and a time box for that check.
  4. Act: execute once, decisively, with a known rollback or degrade path.
  5. Re-observe immediately: compare outcome to prediction within the time box; feed the result into the next Observe. Loop until stable or until the next move is no longer reversible enough for this skill.
  6. Stop condition: exit the loop when the system is stable, the remaining work is static analysis, or the next step requires irreversible commitment — then switch method.
Show full SKILL.md (131 more words)Show less

Output

A cycle record (repeat per loop):

  1. Observed — current signals and what changed since last cycle.
  2. Orientation — ≥2 hypotheses; which one leads and why.
  3. Decision — action, confidence, predicted effect, next observation, time box.
  4. Act + result — what ran and what the immediate re-observe showed.
  5. Loop status — continue / stable / escalate out of OODA.

Verification

  • Falsify/stop: if you cannot name a reversible next action and a near-term observation that would refute it, stop looping and gather more evidence or escalate. If re-observe never happens after act, the loop is broken — fix that before another action.
  • Over-application guard: do not OODA static design work, irreversible launches, or cases where a single cheap localization check ends the uncertainty. Do not wait for 100% confidence on reversible mitigations under active incident pressure.

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

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/thinking-ooda of tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 7b8fece

Compare with similar skills

Thinking Ooda 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.

Thinking Ooda compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Thinking Ooda this skilltjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills1.6k—~790Automated safety check: PassMIT
V5 Breaking Changesremotion-dev/remotion63k—~879Automated safety check: PassCustom licence
Make Changesremix-run/remix33k—~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Orch Change Featureaffaan-m/ECC276k1 repos~420Automated safety check: PassMIT
Product Thinkingmillionco/react-doctor15k—~3.1kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Change Managementsickn33/agentic-awesome-skills47k2 repos~3.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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  • Thinking Lindy Effect

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  • Thinking Via Negativa

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  • Thinking Cynefin

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  • Thinking Five Whys Plus

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Questions about Thinking Ooda

What does Thinking Ooda do?

Use under time pressure when the situation is still changing and you must act before certainty — cycle Observe→Orient→Decide→Act on ~70% confidence, then re-observe. Thinking Ooda is an agent skill from tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills. Use under time pressure when the situation is still changing and you must act before certainty — cycle Observe→Orient→Decide→Act on ~70% confidence, then re-observe.

How do I install Thinking Ooda in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Thinking Ooda in Codex?

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

Can I use Thinking Ooda 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 tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills --skill thinking-ooda -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/thinking-ooda, .gemini/skills/thinking-ooda, .github/skills/thinking-ooda and .opencode/skills/thinking-ooda in your project.

What does Thinking Ooda need to run?

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

Does Thinking Ooda 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 Thinking Ooda 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 Thinking Ooda use?

Thinking Ooda 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 Thinking Ooda use?

About 790 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.2k 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 Thinking Ooda?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Thinking Ooda: V5 Breaking Changes (remotion-dev/remotion, 63k stars), Make Changes (remix-run/remix, 33k stars), Orch Change Feature (affaan-m/ECC, 276k stars) and Product Thinking (millionco/react-doctor, 15k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Thinking Ooda?

tjboudreaux (a GitHub user) maintains it in tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills, which has 1,613 GitHub stars. The repository holds 26 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on August 7, 2026.

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