ask-dont-circle SKILL.md skillA
ask-dont-circle from anonymousnomad/aide-sovereign-workbench is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add anonymousnomad/aide-sovereign-workbench/ask-dont-circle@git:20260823.df7cbdePins git:20260823.df7cbde in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- anonymousnomad/aide-sovereign-workbench
- Path
skills/packs/ask-dont-circle/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260823.df7cbde, committed Aug 23, 2026
- Size
- 3,009 bytes
- Repository stars
- 53
- License
- Apache-2.0
Anti-loop protocol — if you do not understand something, ask the user, or search and verify from multiple independent sources FIRST, before doing anything else. Never go in circles. Use whenever a task is ambiguous, when a decision keeps stalling, when the same question is being asked twice, or when you are about to repeat work that already happened.
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
# Ask, Don't Circle Going in circles is the one failure this program cannot afford. The fix is simple: confusion is resolved by ASKING (a human) or by SEARCHING (multiple independent sources) — never by re-guessing the same things. ## 1. Detect the circle (stop when any is true) - You are about to do the same action a second time hoping for a different answer. - You are re-reading the same file/docs for the Nth time without new information. - You cannot state, out loud, what the actual next action is and why. - The same question has been asked twice in the conversation. - A decision is pending on information you could get from a human or a search. The instant a circle is detected: STOP what you are doing. Do not read the file again. Do not "just try it." Resolve the confusion through one of the paths below. ## 2. Resolve by asking (when the answer is a human decision) - If instructions are ambiguous, contradictory, or incomplete: ask the user directly (concise, specific, with concrete options where possible). - If the user's directive conflicts with existing state/plans: ask, do not guess. - If the cost of guessing wrong is high (GPU time, corpus writes, release moves): …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add anonymousnomad/aide-sovereign-workbench/ask-dont-circle@sha256:6ba83a18e23d2ffcThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260823.df7cbde, 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_vgw2yk3dpdmvamlu)
4 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Aug 23, 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 (3009 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
anonymousnomad/aide-sovereign-workbench · 53 stars · license Apache-2.0 · pushed 2026-10-26 · branch covert-production
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_vgw2yk3dpdmvamlu GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=anonymousnomad/aide-sovereign-workbench/ask-dont-circle GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/6ba83a18e23d2ffc2a28884efeaa6cf66cb206ad6c5ba91500762c4f46358a35
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.