think-five-whys SKILL.md skillA
think-five-whys from product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-five-whys@v0.1.0Pins v0.1.0 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills
- Path
skills/think-five-whys/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- v0.1.0, committed Jun 20, 2026
- Size
- 7,358 bytes
- Repository stars
- 25
- License
- Apache-2.0
Runs a Five Whys root-cause trace caveat-first. It leads with the weak evidence (Card 2017 found the single-chain method oversimplifies multi-causal problems), then forces the discipline a bare why-chain lacks, namely flagging at each step whether more than one cause could apply. Use only when Five Whys is asked for by name; for any problem that might have more than one cause prefer think-issue-tree.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
<!-- thinking-framework-skills | https://github.com/product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills | Apache-2.0 --> # Five Whys Five Whys traces a problem to a root cause by asking "why?" of each answer, about five times, until you reach a cause worth fixing. It is famous and frequently requested, and its evidence is weak: the critical literature finds it flattens multi-cause problems into a single chain and discards the rest. This skill runs Five Whys honestly. It leads with that caveat, then forces the one discipline a bare why-chain omits and that makes it safe to run at all: at each step, flag whether more than one cause could apply, and the moment the problem is multi-cause, say so and hand it to `think-issue-tree`. The output is a single linear why-chain with a branch-or-not flag on each step plus one countermeasure aimed at the terminal node, not a confident single root cause presented as the cause. ## Before you run this: the evidence caveat …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-five-whys@sha256:033ee19ef2d62511The line at the top of this page pins the label v0.1.0, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_5uhjmdoq3a3b37ip)
3 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Jun 20, 2026.
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (7358 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills · 25 stars · license Apache-2.0 · pushed 2026-11-07 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_5uhjmdoq3a3b37ip GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills/think-five-whys GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/033ee19ef2d62511eb6e2b26cd7f0a57534cb8309d675ff686987642aa52f955
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.