first-principles-thinking SKILL.md skillA
first-principles-thinking from ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/first-principles-thinking@v2026.10.5Pins v2026.10.5 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills
- Path
skills/first-principles-thinking/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 5
- Latest version
- v2026.10.5, committed Oct 5, 2026
- First version recorded
- May 18, 2026
- Size
- 3,281 bytes
- Repository stars
- 17
- License
- MIT
Use for first principles thinking, or when the user questions an inherited default: "why do we do it this way?", "is this cost really necessary?", "should we copy what competitors do?". Strips analogies and rebuilds from fundamentals. Skip for convention-following checklists.
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
# First Principles Thinking
Question inherited baggage. Rebuild only from **bedrock** you can defend.
## When to use
- "Why do we do it this way?", "is this really required?", "what would this cost if we started from scratch?"
- A strategy or design copied from an incumbent ("like Uber for X") that nobody has checked.
- Cost, architecture or process choices that exist only because they always have.
Skip: quick convention-following checklists with no wish to revisit assumptions, or purely social coordination with nothing to model.
## Before you start
1. State in one block: **Reconstruction target** (belief, cost, design or strategy to ground) and **Pass** (Surface, Question, Bedrock, Rebuild, Implications).
2. **Gather first.** Read the code, contracts, specs or data that show what is actually required (a regulation, an SLA, a measured limit) before tagging anything fundamental. Ask up to 3 questions only for immutable constraints that tools cannot answer.
3. **Light path.** Small ask: 3 assumptions, 3 bedrock items, a 3-step rebuild, 2 implications.
## Steps
### 1. Surface
…Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/first-principles-thinking@sha256:69237eca7bd376caThe line at the top of this page pins the label v2026.10.5, 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_6bci26v743zt7xda)
2 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 5 versions of this file, between May 18, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026, about one every 35 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| v2026.10.5 latest | 2026-10-05 | f2bebb8 | 3,281 B | A | view · diff |
| v2026.5.17 | 2026-05-18 | 1866e36 | 3,285 B | A | view · diff |
| v2026.5.17 | 2026-05-18 | ceb6606 | 3,176 B | A | view · diff |
| v2026.5.17 | 2026-05-18 | 6afc97b | 3,103 B | A | view · diff |
| v2026.5.17 | 2026-05-18 | 926b700 | 2,821 B | A | view |
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 (3281 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
ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills · 17 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-10-16 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_6bci26v743zt7xda GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=ysskrishna/ai-agent-skills/first-principles-thinking GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/69237eca7bd376caea681cf4a49d10a1a0f2228137871c5df92a7f3b0594fdc2
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.
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