explore-unknowns SKILL.md skillA
explore-unknowns from dzhng/skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add dzhng/skills/explore-unknowns@git:20260930.60ae302Pins git:20260930.60ae302 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- dzhng/skills
- Path
skills/engineering/explore-unknowns/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 3
- Latest version
- git:20260930.60ae302, committed Sep 30, 2026
- First version recorded
- Jul 5, 2026
- Size
- 6,843 bytes
- Repository stars
- 1,377
- License
- MIT
Guide the user through a quadrant walk that maps the unknowns of a task — open by listing the known knowns, then work through known unknowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns one stage at a time, ending with a complete four-quadrant map in the user's hands. Use when a request is ambiguous or underspecified, the codebase or domain is unfamiliar, the user will "know it when they see it", a reference implementation must be understood before porting, mid-build deviations from the plan need…
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
# Explore Unknowns The map is not the territory. The prompt, the plan, and the context window are the map; the codebase, the domain, and the user's actual intent are the territory. The gap between them is the unknowns — and an unknown found before code is written costs minutes, while the same unknown found three PRs later costs the three PRs. This skill is a guided conversation: the **quadrant walk**. Together with the user you fill in a four-quadrant map of the task, one quadrant per stage, and the user walks away holding the completed map. The map is the deliverable; implementation is a different task that starts only after the map is handed over. Two moves apply at every stage: - **Reacting beats imagining.** Never ask the user to describe what they want when you can hand them something concrete to react to — a rendered option, a clickable mock, a decisions table. Reacting extracts knowledge the user has but cannot articulate unprompted. - **Every artifact assembles the reply.** End each artifact with the user's next message pre-drafted: steal/skip chips, resonate checkboxes, a decisions table, a copyable sharpened prompt — so their reaction becomes …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add dzhng/skills/explore-unknowns@sha256:b149931393b14c68The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260930.60ae302, 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_ov5l6pgcudnizivb)
4 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 3 versions of this file, between Jul 5, 2026 and Sep 30, 2026, about one every 43 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| git:20260930.60ae302 latest | 2026-09-30 | 60ae302 | 6,843 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260719.a649311 | 2026-07-19 | a649311 | 4,461 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260705.4feff56 | 2026-07-05 | 4feff56 | 4,149 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 (6843 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
dzhng/skills · 1,377 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-10-21 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_ov5l6pgcudnizivb GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=dzhng/skills/explore-unknowns GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/b149931393b14c68b6d287f3ad879506ab8142ff585d6c5e7fe5338b46126db5
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.