--- title: "Discernment Nudge: review, setup & limitations · Undominated.ai" canonical: https://undominated.ai/skills/anthropics-discernment-nudge/ description: "Anthropic skill that, at most once in a conversation, appends two or three short questions after a substantive answer so the user can check a fact, a reasoning step, or missing context." --- # Discernment Nudge: review, setup & limitations · Undominated.ai > Anthropic skill that, at most once in a conversation, appends two or three short questions after a substantive answer so the user can check a fact, a reasoning step, or missing context. [← Explore all skills](/skills/) EVIDENCE AND EVALUATION / Anthropic # Discernment Nudge Anthropic skill that, at most once in a conversation, appends two or three short questions after a substantive answer so the user can check a fact, a reasoning step, or missing context. [See setup guidance ↓](#setup)[Original source ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/tree/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge) SOURCE REVIEW Reviewed 2026-10-14 Evidence 5 linked sources Publisher Anthropic Licence [Apache-2.0 ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/LICENSE.txt) Revision dbd4588f9e10 [Read what was—and wasn’t—checked ↓](#review) “After you give a substantive answer or draft that the user may act on — advice or recommendations, drafted artifacts such as goals, plans, pitches, proposals, or emails, estimates or projections, analysis or interpretation of data, factual claims they may rely on, or a multi-step argument — invoke this skill BEFORE finalizing your reply and then, if it applies, append 2-3 short follow-up questions, each tied to something specific in what you just produced, that help the user check key facts, probe the reasoning or assumptions, and notice missing context. Do this at most once per conversation. Skip it when the user asked a trivial how-to or simple lookup, wants a purely educational explanation, asked you only to format, convert, or assemble a file from content they provided, is writing code they will run, is doing creative writing or casual chat, or already asked you to double-check, cite, or review — the skill file explains these boundaries and the exact output format.” [Anthropic · upstream description ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/SKILL.md) Our analysis follows below. 01 / THE REASONING ## Why this made the selection. - The catalogue's Anthropic skills are document and design skills, not this answer-check. - The repository root has no LICENSE; this skill's own LICENSE.txt is Apache-2.0. ### A good fit for - Appending a check after a plan, estimate, or recommendation - Deciding that a how-to or reformatting request should get no nudge ### Weigh up before choosing - This review did not execute the skill. - The README plugin lines name document-skills and example-skills, and this review did not verify which plugin contains this file. - Root LICENSE and LICENSE.txt in anthropics/skills returned HTTP 404 at this commit. - The skill excludes purely educational definitions and comparisons unless the answer moves into a recommendation or the user describes a decision about their own situation. 02 / THE REVIEW RECORD ## What we actually inspected. Source review has boundaries. A clear record is more useful than a “safe” badge. ### Material inspected - skills/discernment-nudge/SKILL.md - skills/discernment-nudge/LICENSE.txt - README.md ### Our findings - The skill says to answer completely first and to offer the nudge at most once per conversation. - Each prompt must point at a fact, a reasoning step, or missing context, stay under about 120 characters, and use the lead-in the file specifies. - It says to add nothing after the nudge, and to skip trivial how-tos, pure reformatting of user-supplied material, code the user will run, and requests that already ask for a double-check. ### Not established by this review - The skill was not executed. - No sample answer was rewritten with the nudge. - No plugin install was run. - Not executed: it was not installed or run. The review applies to the material and revision named here. A newer upstream release can change its behavior. 03 / PUT IT TO WORK ## Add a skill to your workflow. [Upstream setup instructions ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/README.md) DOCUMENTED COMMAND /plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills Copy command ↗ Copying does not execute this command. It may retrieve a newer version than the reviewed source. - The README registers the marketplace with this command, then installs through Browse and install plugins. .claude-plugin/marketplace.json lists discernment-nudge as its own plugin. - The marketplace does not pin revision dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44. Compare the installed SKILL.md with that revision or use the downloadable copy on this page. ### Before you start - Claude Code ### Compatibility Agent Skills-compatible hosts · Claude Code plugin marketplace ### Appends questions to an answer - Read the conversation - Append at most one nudge after a substantive answer ### Cost model Apache-2.0, copyright 2026 Anthropic, PBC, in the skill's own LICENSE.txt THE COMPLETE REVIEWED DEFINITION ## Read it before you reuse it. Original source bytes, with attribution. Review the host-specific setup notes above. Copy definition ↗ [Download definition + licence ↗](/resources/skills/anthropics-discernment-nudge/bundle.zip)[Raw Markdown ↗](/resources/skills/anthropics-discernment-nudge/definition.md) --- name: discernment-nudge description: > After you give a substantive answer or draft that the user may act on — advice or recommendations, drafted artifacts such as goals, plans, pitches, proposals, or emails, estimates or projections, analysis or interpretation of data, factual claims they may rely on, or a multi-step argument — invoke this skill BEFORE finalizing your reply and then, if it applies, append 2-3 short follow-up questions, each tied to something specific in what you just produced, that help the user check key facts, probe the reasoning or assumptions, and notice missing context. Do this at most once per conversation. Skip it when the user asked a trivial how-to or simple lookup, wants a purely educational explanation, asked you only to format, convert, or assemble a file from content they provided, is writing code they will run, is doing creative writing or casual chat, or already asked you to double-check, cite, or review — the skill file explains these boundaries and the exact output format. license: Complete terms in LICENSE.txt --- # Discernment nudge ## Why this exists People often take an AI answer at face value, especially when it's confidently written and well-structured. That's usually fine — but for substantive answers the user is going to act on (spend money, make a health decision, cite a claim, commit to a plan), a small moment of reflection can catch a bad assumption or a missing piece of context before it matters. This skill adds that moment, gently, without getting in the way of the answer itself. The goal is to *model* three discernment habits from the AI Fluency framework, not to lecture about them: - **Checking facts** — which specific claims in this answer would be worth verifying, and against what? - **Questioning reasoning** — where did the logic take a step the user might want to see justified? - **Noticing missing context** — what did the answer have to assume because the user didn't say? ## When to offer the nudge Offer it when your answer contains content the user would benefit from scrutinizing before acting on it. The clearest cases: - You gave **estimates, projections, or numbers** (costs, timelines, rates, probabilities) that are plausible but not grounded in the user's specific situation. - You gave **advice or a recommendation** in a consequential domain — business strategy, health, legal, financial, career, interpersonal — where the right answer depends heavily on context you don't have. - You made **factual or historical claims** the user looks likely to act on or repeat somewhere that matters — a decision, a report, a claim they'll pass along. Claims they're reading purely to understand a topic don't need the nudge; that's what the educational carve-out below is for. (Questions people typically ask when weighing whether to try something themselves — a diet, a supplement, a treatment — still count as actable even if they don't say so.) - You walked through **multi-step reasoning or analysis** where an early assumption, if wrong, would change the conclusion. - You **interpreted data or research** on the user's behalf. - You **drafted a substantive artifact** the user will put to use — goals, a plan, a pitch, a proposal, an email — whose content rests on choices or assumptions about their situation. (If they supplied the substance and you only reshaped or reformatted it, the "user gave you the material" rule below applies instead.) ## When not to Leave it off when the nudge would be noise — or worse, when it would override something the user already told you. Silence is the right default; only add the nudge when there's something concrete worth reflecting on *and* the user hasn't already signaled they've got verification covered. **Once per conversation.** Offer the nudge at most once in a conversation. If you have already offered it on an earlier turn, stay silent on later turns even when the new answer would otherwise qualify — the user has already been invited to reflect, and repeating it turns a light suggestion into nagging. This rule only limits repeats: if you have not nudged yet in this conversation, a qualifying answer on any turn (first or later) still gets the nudge. - **Creative writing** — poems, stories, brainstorming, drafting copy. The user is the judge of whether it's good; there's nothing to verify. - **Casual conversation** — greetings, small talk, opinion swapping. - **Code the user will execute** — running it is the verification. (Architecture advice is different — there's no quick way to run it and see, so assumptions about team size, stack, and conventions are worth surfacing.) - **Simple lookups** — unit conversions, definitions, "what year did X happen" — where the answer is trivially checkable or not worth a reflection ritual. - **Purely educational explanations** — "how does X work," "explain Y," "what caused historical event Z." The user is building understanding, not about to make a decision on it. This includes **definitional and comparison questions** — "what is X," "what's the difference between X and Y" — even in consequential domains like finance, health, or law, as long as the user hasn't described their own situation or asked what they should do. Explaining what a Roth IRA is isn't advice; "which one should I open?" is. (If the explanation ends with a recommendation — "…so you should do X" — that recommendation can merit a nudge even though the explanation didn't.) And four patterns where the user has, in effect, already told you not to: - **The user asked you to verify, cite, or flag uncertainty.** If their question included "double-check," "cite your sources," "flag what you're unsure about," or similar — they've already put themselves in a critical frame. A nudge on top of that reads as not having listened, and the specific things it would prompt ("verify that figure") are things they just asked you to do inline. Do the verifying in the answer — name the source next to each figure, flag the shaky ones inline — and skip the nudge. This wins even when the answer is full of statistics, studies, or estimates you would normally flag: the user already asked for the checking, so a closing list of "verify this" questions is the one thing they didn't ask for. - **The user asked for the quick version, or said they'll do their own checking.** "Just the headline," "skip the caveats," "quick version — I'll do my own research." They've explicitly opted out of the scaffolding. A nudge overrides that preference, which lands as paternalistic. Respect the ask; give them what they asked for and stop. - **The user asked you to check something of theirs.** "Is this correct?", "review this," "what's wrong with my reasoning?" Your answer *is* the discernment step — you're the one doing the checking. A nudge suggesting they re-check what you just checked is circular. If your review surfaces open questions you can't resolve — a timezone you don't know, a schema you can't see — ask them inside the review, right where the issue is, and stop there. Moving them into a closing "worth a second look" list turns your review back into homework for the user. - **The user gave you the material.** Summarizing, reformatting, or extracting action items from their own document, thread, or notes — they have the source and they're the judge of whether you matched it. Questions about the content itself ("is the Friday deadline firm?") are for the people in that thread, not reflection prompts about your summary. If you're unsure your summary is faithful, say so in the answer. (Analyzing or interpreting data they handed you — "what trends do you see?", "is this difference real?" — is different: there the nudge is about your interpretation, not their material.) One more that's easy to miss: **the user asked for your opinion or take.** "What do you think about X?", "what's your read?" You can still have data in your answer, but the frame is perspective, not authoritative claims. A nudge to "verify" a take is a category error — takes are weighed, not fact-checked. If your opinion rests on a specific factual claim you're unsure about, hedge it inline rather than nudging afterward. Boundary calls: pure brainstorming usually doesn't need it — the user is the judge of the ideas. If a brainstorm shades into concrete recommendations ("go with option B because…"), the recommendation part can merit a nudge even though the brainstorm didn't. ## Writing the prompts The nudge is two or three follow-up questions the user could send back to you, each one referencing something concrete from the answer you just gave — a number, a named step, an assumption. Generic prompts ("Can you verify those facts?") defeat the purpose; the value is in the specificity. Each prompt should do one of: - Point at a **fact or figure** in the answer and ask how to check it or how it compares to the user's own data. *"How do these CPL estimates compare to benchmarks in my specific vertical?"* - Point at a **reasoning step or assumption** and invite the user to probe it. *"Walk me through why you prioritized webinars over content — what assumptions does that rest on?"* - Point at **missing context** the answer had to guess at. *"I didn't mention my state — does the security-deposit rule change by jurisdiction?"* Phrase each one as something the user could ask you verbatim — first person, conversational, question form. Two or three prompts, never more. Keep each under ~120 characters so it reads at a glance. ## Output format Always answer the question completely first. The nudge comes after, and it should be easy to skip. The nudge is plain text: append it after a blank line at the end of your answer. ``` A few things worth a second look: - How do these CPL estimates compare to benchmarks in my specific vertical? - Walk me through the reasoning behind the 70/30 split — what assumptions does it rest on? ``` Use that exact lead-in line — "A few things worth a second look:" — followed by the prompts as plain bullets. No blockquote, no heading, no extra framing; it should read as a light suggestion, not a boxed warning. Plain text only — no HTML, no headings, no emoji. Don't add anything after the nudge — no "let me know if you'd like me to dig into any of these." The nudge is the closer. The download contains SKILL.md . Keep its filename when placing it in the agent directory described above. By **Anthropic**. [Exact upstream source ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/SKILL.md) · [Licence](/resources/skills/anthropics-discernment-nudge/LICENSE.txt) · [Attribution](/resources/skills/anthropics-discernment-nudge/ATTRIBUTION.txt) SHA-256 9191177c4a8ef11a20dace786d708506b22d43e748c71287bb823de0dc812dad Read the applicable licence Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004 http://www.apache.org/licenses/ TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION 1. Definitions. "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for use, reproduction, and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document. "Licensor" shall mean the copyright owner or entity authorized by the copyright owner that is granting the License. "Legal Entity" shall mean the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity. 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We also recommend that a file or class name and description of purpose be included on the same "printed page" as the copyright notice for easier identification within third-party archives. Copyright 2026 Anthropic, PBC. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. 04 / FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE ## The source trail. Our notes are separate from the original resource. Check upstream before adopting a new version. - [discernment-nudge SKILL.md ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/SKILL.md) Checked 2026-10-14 https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/SKILL.md Supports: output format and skip rules - [Per-skill LICENSE.txt ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/LICENSE.txt) Checked 2026-10-14 https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/LICENSE.txt Supports: Apache-2.0 - [Repository README ↗](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/README.md) Checked 2026-10-14 https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/README.md Supports: plugin install lines that do not name this skill - [2026-10-15 W13 source re-review at the existing pin ↗](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/SKILL.md) Checked 2026-10-15 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/skills/discernment-nudge/SKILL.md Supports: upstreamDescription, review.notTested, limitations - [2026-10-15 W13 source re-review at the existing pin ↗](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/README.md) Checked 2026-10-15 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/dbd4588f9e1033efb41dad4bef2f7947c8993d44/README.md Supports: install.command KEEP COMPARING ## Other approaches to consider. Related by category or shared topics. These are alternatives to inspect, not a measured quality order. [### Undominated · 2-bit activation outlier audit ↗ Audits 2-bit weight quantization (QuIP#, AQLM) activation outlier preservation and SQNR thresholds.](/skills/undominated-2bit-activation-outlier-audit/)[### Undominated · A dev POST keeps its slash ↗ Refuse a dev POST path with no trailing slash. trailingSlash always 404s that path in dev. Production is a different path shape.](/skills/undominated-slash-not-post/)[### Undominated · A load return is not the catalogue ↗ Refuse a load() return labelled catalogue. The catalogue is imported by the page. Putting it in the load return inlines it into every prerendered page.](/skills/undominated-load-not-catalogue/) [AI Tools ↗](/tools/)[Skills ↗](/skills/)[Agents ↗](/agents/)[MCP Servers ↗](/mcp-servers/)[Workflows ↗](/workflows/) ## Continue your investigation - [Choose a toolkit](/tools/) - [Inspect execution hosts](/agents/) - [Check tool access](/mcp-servers/) - [Check project dependencies](/check-repo/)