Historical Thinking Strategy Modelling Guide Agent Skill

Design a teacher think-aloud that models historical thinking strategies with a specific document.

Context cost
6.8k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 27.2 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 teacher think-aloud that models historical thinking strategies with a specific document. Use when planning explicit strategy instruction or when students follow a protocol without understanding the underlying reasoning.

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.

digdocumentationexplicit-instructionhistorical-thinkingmodellingstrategy-instructionthink-aloudworked-example

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.md27.2 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "historical-thinking/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide" skill_name: "Historical Thinking Strategy Modelling Guide" domain: "historical-thinking" version: "1.0" contributor: "Sean Hu" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Wineburg (2007) — Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking" - "Wineburg (1991) — Historical problem solving: cognitive processes in the evaluation of documentary and pictorial evidence" - "Wineburg (1998) — Reading Abraham Lincoln: an expert/expert study in historical cognition" - "Reisman (2012) — Reading like a historian: a document-based history curriculum intervention in urban high schools" - "Gottlieb & Wineburg (2012) — Between Veritas and Communitas: epistemic switching in the reading of academic and sacred history" - "Rosenshine (2012) — Principles of instruction: research-based strategies that all teachers should know" input_schema: required: - field: "document_description" type: "string" - field: "target_strategies" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" optional: - field: "current_challenge" type: "string" - field: "second_document" type: "string" - field: "lesson_context" type: "string" - field: "prior_instruction" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "think_aloud_script" type: "string" - field: "cognitive_moves_annotated" type: "array" - field: "common_pitfalls" type: "array" - field: "transition_to_practice" type: "object" chains_well_with: - "sourcing-skill-builder" - "close-reading-skill-builder" - "contextualisation-skill-builder" - "corroboration-skill-builder" - "document-based-lesson-designer" - "historical-source-adapter" - "think-aloud-script-generator" - "explicit-instruction-sequence-builder" teacher_time: "3 minutes" tags: ["modelling", "think-aloud", "historical-thinking", "explicit-instruction", "worked-example", "strategy-instruction", "DIG"] ---
75# Historical Thinking Strategy Modelling Guide
76
77## What This Skill Does
78
79Generates a teacher think-aloud script that models one or more historical thinking strategies (sourcing, close reading, contextualisation, corroboration) with a specific document. The output includes the complete script with pauses and self-talk, annotations identifying each cognitive move, common pitfalls to avoid, and guidance on transitioning from the modelled example to student practice.
80
81The central insight from Wineburg's research is that expert historical reading is invisible. When a historian reads a document, the cognitive work — pausing at the source note, generating hypotheses from bibliographic information, noticing loaded language, connecting the document to its historical moment — happens internally. Students see the historian read and then produce an interpretation, but the process between reading and interpretation is a black box. The purpose of a think-aloud is to open that box: to externalise the internal reasoning so students can see, hear, and eventually replicate it.
82
83This skill is distinct from the four individual skill builders (sourcing, close reading, contextualisation, corroboration), which design a complete instructional sequence. This skill generates only the modelling component — the "I DO" phase — but does so in greater depth and with greater specificity than any single skill builder can. It produces a document-specific script that a teacher can rehearse and deliver, with annotations explaining what each move demonstrates and why it matters.
84
85Reisman (2012) found that explicit strategy instruction — modelling, guided practice, independent practice — was the pedagogical structure through which historical thinking skills were taught in the Reading Like a Historian curriculum. However, Reisman also found that teacher fidelity to modelling was low: most teachers scored below baseline on the fidelity rubric, and whole-class discussion (where modelling is most visible) was extremely rare. This skill exists to make modelling more accessible by providing a concrete, rehearsable script rather than leaving teachers to improvise expert-level historical reasoning on the spot.
86
87## Evidence Foundation
88
89Wineburg (2007) demonstrated what expert modelling reveals through the Harrison Proclamation example. A doctoral student's think-aloud showed a cascade of cognitive moves: reading the date, immediately activating contextual knowledge about the 1890s, connecting that context to the document's language, and arriving at a hypothesis about its political purpose — all in under a minute. This think-aloud made visible what Wineburg called the "specification of ignorance": the expert practice of using a document to articulate what one does not know and needs to find out, rather than rushing to judgement.
90
91Wineburg (1991, 1998) established through think-aloud studies that historians engage in qualitatively different cognitive processes when reading documents. These processes — sourcing before reading, attending to language as evidence of perspective, connecting documents to their historical moment, comparing accounts across sources — are the target behaviours for modelling. The think-aloud methodology used to study experts became, in the Reading Like a Historian curriculum, the pedagogical method used to teach novices.
92
93Gottlieb and Wineburg (2012) showed that the quality of expert reading is in the depth of reasoning, not the frequency of strategy use. A scientist and a historian might both note an author's name, but the historian mines that information for inferences about the text's likely stance. Modelling must therefore demonstrate not just the action (look at the source note) but the reasoning (what the source information tells you before you read a word).
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md3,924 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.

≈1,080
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
5,720
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
3.4%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 34% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

6.8k 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, 27.2 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md27.2 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.

# Historical Thinking Strategy Modelling Guide · 6.8k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2 ] || { mv .claude/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2 "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2

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/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2/ 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/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2 ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2 "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2/ 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. It appears as historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2.

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/historical-thinking-strategy-modelling-guide-2

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.

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