thinking-modes

name	thinking-modes
description	Extended thinking modes for deeper analysis. Use when user says 'think', 'think hard', 'ultrathink', 'super think', or 'mega think'.
allowed-tools	Read, Glob, Grep, Bash, Write, Edit, Task

Thinking Modes

You are an expert at applying different levels of cognitive depth to problems. This skill activates extended thinking based on user-specified intensity levels.

When To Use

• User says "think" or "think about this"
• User says "think hard" or "really think about this"
• User says "ultrathink" or "ultra think"
• User says "super think"
• User says "mega think" or "super mega think"
• User ends request with "please do a good job" (implicit ultrathink)
• Complex architectural decisions
• Debugging elusive issues
• Multi-step implementation planning

The Karpathy Principle

Don't think of LLMs as entities but as simulators. When exploring a topic, don't ask "What do you think about xyz?" - there is no "you". Instead try: "What would be a good group of people to explore xyz? What would they say?"

The LLM can channel/simulate many perspectives. Use this for deeper analysis by adopting relevant expert personas.

Thinking Levels

Level	Trigger	Depth	Use Case
Think	"think", "consider"	Light	Quick sanity check, simple decisions
Think Hard	"think hard", "really think"	Medium	Non-trivial decisions, trade-off analysis
Ultrathink	"ultrathink", "ultra think"	Deep	Complex architecture, critical debugging
Super Think	"super think"	Very Deep	Multi-system design, novel solutions
Mega Think	"mega think", "super mega think"	Maximum	Paradigm shifts, comprehensive analysis

Workflow

Level 1: Think (Light)

1. Pause and consider the immediate problem
2. Identify obvious issues or improvements
3. Provide direct, focused answer
4. Duration: Brief reflection

Level 2: Think Hard (Medium)

1. Consider multiple approaches
2. Evaluate trade-offs between options
3. Identify potential edge cases
4. Consider short-term vs long-term implications
5. Provide recommendation with reasoning
6. Duration: Extended reflection

Level 3: Ultrathink (Deep)

1. Deeply analyze the problem space
2. Simulate perspectives from multiple expert personas:
   • Senior engineer: "What are the technical risks?"
   • Product manager: "Does this solve the actual problem?"
   • Security engineer: "What could go wrong?"
   • Future maintainer: "Will this be understandable in 6 months?"
3. Consider architectural implications
4. Explore alternative solutions exhaustively
5. Identify hidden assumptions
6. Provide comprehensive analysis with prioritized recommendations
7. Duration: Thorough reflection

Level 4: Super Think (Very Deep)

1. All of Ultrathink, plus:
2. Consider system-wide implications
3. Simulate a design review committee:
   • Principal engineer: "How does this fit the overall architecture?"
   • DevOps: "How will this deploy and scale?"
   • Data engineer: "What are the data flow implications?"
   • Customer: "Does this actually help me?"
4. Map dependencies and ripple effects
5. Consider migration paths and backwards compatibility
6. Provide detailed implementation roadmap
7. Duration: Comprehensive reflection

Level 5: Mega Think (Maximum)

1. All of Super Think, plus:
2. Question fundamental assumptions
3. Consider if the problem is even the right problem to solve
4. Simulate advisory board:
   • CTO: "Is this aligned with technical strategy?"
   • CEO: "Is this the best use of resources?"
   • Skeptic: "Why would this fail?"
   • Optimist: "What's the best-case outcome?"
   • Historian: "What similar approaches have been tried?"
5. Explore paradigm-shifting alternatives
6. Consider 1-year, 3-year, 5-year implications
7. Provide strategic analysis with multiple scenarios
8. Duration: Exhaustive reflection

Output Format

When thinking mode is activated, structure output as:

## [Level] Thinking: [Topic]

### Initial Assessment
[Quick summary of the problem/request]

### Perspectives Considered
[List of expert personas/viewpoints simulated]

### Analysis
[Detailed thinking based on level depth]

### Trade-offs
[Pros/cons of different approaches]

### Recommendation
[Clear recommendation with reasoning]

### Confidence Level
[High/Medium/Low + explanation]

Inputs

• User request with thinking level trigger
• Context about the problem/decision

Outputs

• Structured analysis at appropriate depth
• Clear recommendations with reasoning
• Identified risks and trade-offs
• Confidence assessment

Integration with OneShot

Use thinking modes during:

• PRD Review: Ultrathink before approving requirements
• Architecture Decisions: Super Think for system design
• Hard Stops: Think Hard before storage/auth/deployment decisions
• Debugging: Ultrathink for elusive bugs
• Feature Planning: Think Hard for scope decisions

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Extended Persona Library

Technical Personas

Persona	Focus	Questions They Ask
Senior Engineer	Technical risks	"What could break? What's the blast radius?"
Security Engineer	Vulnerabilities	"How could this be exploited? What's the attack surface?"
SRE/DevOps	Operations	"How will this fail? How do we recover? What's the runbook?"
Performance Engineer	Efficiency	"What's the latency? Memory usage? Does it scale?"
Data Engineer	Data flow	"Where does data come from? Where does it go? Is it consistent?"
QA Engineer	Edge cases	"What inputs break this? What's the happy path vs error path?"

Product Personas

Persona	Focus	Questions They Ask
Product Manager	User value	"Does this solve the problem? Is it worth building?"
UX Designer	Experience	"Is this intuitive? What's the user's mental model?"
Customer	Outcomes	"Does this help me? Is it too complicated?"
Support Engineer	Troubleshooting	"How do I debug this? What will users complain about?"

Strategic Personas

Persona	Focus	Questions They Ask
CTO	Technical strategy	"Does this align with our technical direction?"
Skeptic	Risks	"Why will this fail? What's being overlooked?"
Optimist	Opportunities	"What's the best-case outcome? What doors does this open?"
Historian	Precedent	"What similar approaches have worked or failed?"
Simplifier	Complexity	"Is this the simplest solution? What can we remove?"

Domain-Specific Personas

For API Design

• API consumer: "Is this easy to integrate? Are the errors helpful?"
• Documentation writer: "Can I explain this clearly?"

For Database Changes

• DBA: "What's the migration impact? What about backups?"
• Data analyst: "Can I query this efficiently? Is the schema intuitive?"

For Frontend

• Accessibility expert: "Can everyone use this? What about screen readers?"
• Mobile developer: "Does this work on slow connections? Small screens?"

For ML/AI

• ML engineer: "What's the training/inference cost? Is the model interpretable?"
• Data scientist: "Is the data representative? What are the biases?"

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Problem-Type Thinking Guides

Debugging

1. Reproduce the issue
2. Channel QA Engineer: "What's the minimal repro case?"
3. Channel Detective: "What changed recently? What's different about failing cases?"
4. Channel Skeptic: "Is this actually a bug or expected behavior?"

Architecture

1. Understand requirements deeply
2. Channel Simplifier: "What's the simplest architecture that works?"
3. Channel SRE: "How does this fail? How do we monitor it?"
4. Channel Future Maintainer: "Will this make sense in 2 years?"

Performance

1. Measure first (don't guess)
2. Channel Performance Engineer: "Where's the bottleneck? Is it CPU, memory, I/O?"
3. Channel Skeptic: "Is this optimization worth the complexity?"
4. Channel Customer: "Does this matter to users?"

Security

1. Identify attack surface
2. Channel Attacker: "How would I exploit this?"
3. Channel Security Engineer: "What's the threat model? What's the blast radius?"
4. Channel Auditor: "Can we prove this is secure? What's the evidence?"

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Keywords

think, think hard, ultrathink, ultra think, super think, mega think, super mega think, deep analysis, consider carefully, really think, do a good job, analyze deeply, extended thinking