Critical Thinking Task Designer Agent Skill

Design a critical thinking task targeting specific skills like evaluating evidence, identifying bias, or analysing arguments.

Context cost
6.3k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 25.4 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Design a critical thinking task targeting specific skills like evaluating evidence, identifying bias, or analysing arguments. Use when embedding critical analysis into subject lessons.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

analysiscritical-thinkingdocumentationdomain-specificevaluationhigher-order-thinking

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md25.4 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: critical-thinking-task-designer disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "literacy-critical-thinking/critical-thinking-task-designer" skill_name: "Critical Thinking Task Designer" domain: "literacy-critical-thinking" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Paul & Elder (2008) — The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools" - "Facione (1990) — Critical Thinking: a statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Delphi report)" - "Willingham (2007) — Critical thinking: why is it so hard to teach?" - "Abrami et al. (2008) — Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: a meta-analysis" - "Ennis (1989) — Critical thinking and subject specificity: clarification and needed research" input_schema: required: - field: "topic" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" - field: "critical_thinking_focus" type: "string" optional: - field: "subject_area" type: "string" - field: "student_profiles" type: "array" - field: "task_format" type: "string" - field: "time_available" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "task" type: "object" - field: "critical_vs_surface_guide" type: "object" - field: "teacher_prompts" type: "array" - field: "assessment_indicators" type: "string" chains_well_with: - "socratic-questioning-sequence-generator" - "argument-structure-scaffold-generator" - "source-credibility-evaluation-protocol" - "discussion-protocol-selector" - "ai-output-critical-audit-designer" teacher_time: "4 minutes" tags: ["critical-thinking", "analysis", "evaluation", "domain-specific", "higher-order-thinking"] ---
71# Critical Thinking Task Designer
72
73## What This Skill Does
74
75Designs a task requiring genuine critical evaluation — not just comprehension or recall, but the evaluation of evidence, identification of assumptions, analysis of competing perspectives, or detection of bias — embedded in specific subject content. Crucially, the output includes criteria for distinguishing critical from surface-level responses (so the teacher can tell the difference) and follow-up prompts that push superficial responses toward genuine critical engagement. AI is specifically valuable here because designing tasks that genuinely require critical thinking (rather than tasks that LOOK like they require critical thinking but can be answered through recall or opinion) is one of the hardest aspects of assessment design — many tasks labelled "critical thinking" actually test comprehension, compliance with a prescribed structure, or the ability to express an opinion without evaluating it.
76
77## Evidence Foundation
78
79Paul & Elder (2008) defined critical thinking as "the art of analysing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it," identifying eight elements of thought (purpose, question, information, inference, assumption, concept, implication, point of view) and nine intellectual standards (clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, fairness). Facione (1990) led the Delphi consensus project defining critical thinking as comprising six core skills: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. Critically, Willingham (2007) demonstrated that critical thinking cannot be taught as a generic skill — it is domain-specific. A student who can critically evaluate a historical source may not be able to critically evaluate a scientific claim, because critical thinking requires deep domain knowledge to identify what counts as good evidence, valid reasoning, and plausible alternatives in each field. This has profound implications: "teaching critical thinking" in isolation (as a standalone skill) produces weak transfer; embedding critical thinking in domain-specific content produces stronger results. Abrami et al. (2008) confirmed this in a meta-analysis: critical thinking instruction is most effective when it is embedded in subject content AND includes explicit instruction in critical thinking principles (a "mixed" approach, effect size 0.94). Ennis (1989) argued that while critical thinking has both general and domain-specific components, effective instruction must address the domain-specific component — the standards of evidence and reasoning within the discipline.
80
81## Input Schema
82
83The teacher must provide:
84- **Topic:** The subject content. *e.g. "The causes of the French Revolution" / "Whether nuclear energy should replace fossil fuels" / "The reliability of different types of historical evidence" / "How Shakespeare presents power in Macbeth"*
85- **Student level:** Year group and current thinking level. *e.g. "Year 11, can express opinions but struggle to support them with evidence or consider counter-arguments" / "Year 8, can identify basic arguments but don't spontaneously evaluate their strength"*
86- **Critical thinking focus:** The specific CT skill. *e.g. "Evaluating the strength of evidence" / "Identifying unstated assumptions" / "Comparing two competing interpretations" / "Detecting bias in a source" / "Distinguishing correlation from causation"*
87
88Optional (injected by context engine if available):
89- **Subject area:** The discipline context
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md3,625 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈790
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
5,560
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
3.2%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 32% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

6.3k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 25.4 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md25.4 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Critical Thinking Task Designer · 6.3k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/critical-thinking-task-designer" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer ] || { mv .claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/critical-thinking-task-designer" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/critical-thinking-task-designer

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/critical-thinking-task-designer" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/critical-thinking-task-designer" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/critical-thinking-task-designer/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/critical-thinking-task-designer

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

Reviews

—no reviews yet

Nobody has reviewed this skill yet. The rating is the mean of the reviews written here, so there is none until somebody writes the first.

Sign in to review it

A review is tied to an account so it can be answered, edited and taken down by the person who wrote it.

Sign in
Who can post

Anybody with an account, one review each. It carries the version that was current when you wrote it, and the publisher may reply once.

Publisher
Servers0
Claim this skill