---
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:

```markdown
## [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

---

## 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?"

---

## 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?"

---

## 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