goodthinking

Published March 1, 2026

A Claude Code plugin that improves conversation quality before execution begins. Conversations go wrong in predictable ways — unclear goals, untested assumptions, unexplored options, decisions made without considering what might go wrong. Good Thinking is a set of thinking skills designed to catch these failure modes early.

Design

Each skill follows a two-part pattern: an evaluation step that determines whether it's relevant, then a multi-step workflow that runs only after the user confirms. Skills are discovered eagerly — Claude suggests them when they might apply, rather than waiting for explicit invocation.

Context-blind agents

Skills spawn subagents without conversation context, ensuring fresh perspectives that aren't anchored to the user's existing framing

Friction preservation

Dissent and disagreement aren't smoothed away by summarization — conflicting views are presented as-is for the user to resolve

Eager discovery

Skills are loaded when they might apply, letting the evaluation step decide relevance rather than relying on prescriptive triggers

Human-in-the-loop

Every skill suggests itself conversationally and waits for confirmation — nothing runs without explicit consent

Understanding

Sharpen the problem before solving it

xc-clarify-framing

Sharpens problem and goal statements

Creates an initial framing of the user's intent, then spawns a context-blind agent to evaluate it for precision, clarity, completeness, and scope. If gaps are found, it asks targeted clarifying questions. A second agent then checks whether the problem could be better framed at a different level of abstraction — surfacing alternative framings the user may not have considered.

xc-breakdown-problem

Breaks problems into independent parts

Proposes an initial decomposition, then iteratively validates it against MECE criteria using a context-blind auditor. The auditor checks that parts are mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive, at uniform abstraction levels, and actionable. The loop continues until all criteria pass — preventing the common failure of breakdowns that look clean but overlap or miss dimensions.

xc-test-thesis

Tests hypotheses under adversarial scrutiny

Spawns two parallel context-blind agents: an Analyst who builds the strongest case FOR the thesis (extracting supporting evidence and validating patterns) and a Skeptic who builds the case AGAINST (finding counter-evidence, alternative interpretations, and logical gaps). Each then sees the other's findings and refines their position. The result is a defensibility spectrum — solid ground, contested claims, and unsupported claims — rather than a binary verdict.

Decision Making

Stress-test decisions before committing

xc-stress-test-decision

Surfaces concerns the user hasn't considered

Identifies the decision as a clear proposition, then spawns a context-blind agent to generate challenges — hidden assumptions, practical risks, opportunity costs, and second-order effects. Results are filtered through relevance, novelty, importance, and actionability gates. Only concerns that survive all four filters are presented. If nothing survives, the user is told the decision was stress-tested with no new issues found.

xc-audit-options

Checks whether options are well-constructed before evaluation

Before the user evaluates a set of options, a context-blind agent tests them against seven framing integrity criteria: missing options, dimensional collapse, description asymmetry, criteria rigging, false exclusivity, scope mismatch, and constraint fabrication. Marginal or checklist-filling concerns are calibrated out. If real issues survive, they're raised before evaluation begins — not after a choice has already been made.

Ideation

Generate and organize ideas with diversity built in

xc-brainstorm

Generates diverse ideas using parallel perspective agents

Frames the problem as "How Might We" questions, then selects 2–4 diversity primes — different lenses or contextual variations designed to push thinking in different directions. Each prime gets its own parallel context-blind agent that generates 8–10 ideas from that perspective. Results are automatically consolidated using the grouping skill below.

xc-group-ideas

Consolidates raw ideas into strategic themes

Takes a raw list of ideas, deduplicates across sources, clusters similar items, and creates 2–7 strategic themes at a uniform abstraction level. Validates that themes are MECE, actionable, and collectively complete. Used automatically after brainstorming, or standalone when ideas accumulate organically in conversation.

Installation for Claude Code

1. Open the plugin manager in Claude Code

/plugin

2. Add the Extreme Clarity marketplace

extremeclarity/claude-plugins

3. Install the goodthinking plugin from the marketplace