abductive-reasoning SKILL.md skillA
abductive-reasoning from deciqai/knowledge-skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add deciqai/knowledge-skills/abductive-reasoning@git:20261025.cb4e537Pins git:20261025.cb4e537 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- deciqai/knowledge-skills
- Path
abductive-reasoning/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 5
- Latest version
- git:20261025.cb4e537, committed Oct 25, 2026
- First version recorded
- Jul 16, 2026
- Size
- 8,027 bytes
- Repository stars
- 13
- License
- MIT
"Activate when: user says 'what's the most likely explanation,' 'why did this happen,' 'we think it's X but not sure,' 'we only have one theory,' 'the team has converged on an answer without checking alternatives,' or when diagnosing a bug/outage/symptom/anomaly under uncertainty.
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
# Abductive Reasoning ## Overview Abduction — *inference to the best explanation* — is the only mode of reasoning that introduces new ideas. Deduction works out consequences; induction generalizes instances; **abduction generates the hypotheses themselves** (Peirce, 1903). Formal schema: *The surprising fact C is observed. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence, there is reason to suspect A is true.* The "best" qualifier carries the weight: consistent-with-evidence is not enough — the hypothesis must beat rivals on coverage, simplicity, prior probability, and predictive power (Harman 1965; Lipton 2004). Composes with [`bayesian-reasoning`](../bayesian-reasoning/SKILL.md) (Bayes scores hypotheses abduction generates), [`occams-razor`](../occams-razor/SKILL.md) (simplicity criterion), [`critical-thinking`](../critical-thinking/SKILL.md) (competing-hypotheses analysis), and `debugging-and-error-recovery` (technical debugging is iterated abduction). ## When to Use - A surprising observation needs explanation (bug, symptom, outage, customer behavior, financial anomaly) - A diagnostic decision must be made under uncertainty (medical, technical, investigative) …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add deciqai/knowledge-skills/abductive-reasoning@sha256:2b08de50c60af682The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20261025.cb4e537, 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_t6pfs6mdvrjhbr7a)
5 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 5 versions of this file, between Jul 16, 2026 and Oct 25, 2026, about one every 25 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| git:20261025.cb4e537 latest | 2026-10-25 | cb4e537 | 8,027 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260816.be84677 | 2026-08-16 | be84677 | 8,027 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260719.ed3f856 | 2026-07-19 | ed3f856 | 8,027 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260717.2ed857e | 2026-07-17 | 2ed857e | 8,027 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260716.fac12bf | 2026-07-16 | fac12bf | 8,027 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 (8027 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
deciqai/knowledge-skills · 13 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-10-25 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_t6pfs6mdvrjhbr7a GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=deciqai/knowledge-skills/abductive-reasoning GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/2b08de50c60af68203f1adfb693b6ee3609d2d693d6d7af1821dc2a4bd81ab0f
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.