Implementation Intention Designer Agent Skill

Create if-then implementation intentions and WOOP plans for specific student behaviour change goals.

Context cost
4.6k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 18.5 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Create if-then implementation intentions and WOOP plans for specific student behaviour change goals. Use when students know what to do but struggle to follow through on habits or routines.

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.

behaviour-changedocumentationgollwitzerhabitsif-then-plansimplementation-intentionsself-regulationwoop

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.md18.5 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: implementation-intention-designer disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "wellbeing-motivation-agency/implementation-intention-designer" skill_name: "Implementation Intention Designer" domain: "wellbeing-motivation-agency" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Gollwitzer (1999) — Implementation intentions: strong effects of simple plans" - "Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006) — Implementation intentions and goal attainment: a meta-analysis" - "Duckworth et al. (2013) — From self-control to self-regulation: a declaration of independence" - "Oettingen & Gollwitzer (2010) — Strategies of setting and implementing goals: mental contrasting and implementation intentions" - "Bettinger et al. (2012) — The role of application assistance and information in college decisions" input_schema: required: - field: "target_behaviour" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" optional: - field: "current_barrier" type: "string" - field: "context" type: "string" - field: "student_profiles" type: "array" - field: "subject_area" type: "string" - field: "time_horizon" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "implementation_intention" type: "object" - field: "mental_contrasting" type: "object" - field: "student_script" type: "string" - field: "monitoring_plan" type: "object" chains_well_with: - "self-efficacy-builder-sequence" - "agency-scaffold-generator" - "self-regulated-learning-strategy-selector" - "metacognitive-prompt-generator" teacher_time: "2 minutes" tags: ["implementation-intentions", "Gollwitzer", "if-then-plans", "WOOP", "habits", "self-regulation", "behaviour-change"] ---
70# Implementation Intention Designer
71
72## What This Skill Does
73
74Designs specific "if-then" plans (implementation intentions) that help students bridge the gap between intention and action — turning vague goals ("I'll revise more") into concrete, situation-specific plans ("If it's 4pm on a school day, then I will spend 25 minutes on spaced retrieval practice for my weakest subject"). The critical insight from Gollwitzer's research is that most failures of self-regulation are not failures of motivation — students often WANT to do the right thing but fail to follow through because they lack a specific plan for WHEN, WHERE, and HOW. Implementation intentions automate the decision by pre-loading it: the student decides in advance exactly what they will do in a specific situation, which removes the need for willpower in the moment. The output includes the implementation intention in the correct if-then format, a mental contrasting exercise (WOOP: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) that strengthens commitment, a student-facing script they can rehearse, and a monitoring plan. AI is specifically valuable here because crafting effective implementation intentions requires identifying the specific situational trigger (not "when I feel like it" but "when I sit down at my desk after dinner"), anticipating obstacles, and calibrating the behaviour to be achievable — a precision that generic goal-setting advice lacks.
75
76## Evidence Foundation
77
78Gollwitzer (1999) demonstrated that implementation intentions — specific if-then plans that link a situational cue to a target behaviour — dramatically increase the probability of follow-through. His meta-analysis (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006) found a medium-to-large effect size (d = 0.65) across 94 studies: people who formed implementation intentions were significantly more likely to achieve their goals than people with equivalent motivation but no specific plan. The mechanism is cognitive: the if-then format creates a mental link between the situation (the "if") and the behaviour (the "then"), so that encountering the situation automatically activates the intended behaviour — bypassing the need for conscious deliberation or willpower. Oettingen & Gollwitzer (2010) combined implementation intentions with mental contrasting (WOOP), showing that the combination is more effective than either alone: mental contrasting creates commitment (by making the person realise the obstacle is real and their plan is needed), and the implementation intention provides the specific action plan. Duckworth et al. (2013) applied this to education, showing that implementation intentions help students with study habits, homework completion, and exam preparation. Bettinger et al. (2012) demonstrated that simple implementation-intention-style assistance (specific plans for when and how to complete college applications) increased college enrollment among low-income students by 8 percentage points — a remarkable effect for a minimal intervention.
79
80## Input Schema
81
82The teacher must provide:
83- **Target behaviour:** What the student needs to do. *e.g. "Start homework on the day it's set instead of the night before it's due" / "Use retrieval practice when revising instead of re-reading notes" / "Put their hand up to contribute in class discussion instead of staying silent" / "Take a 4-7-8 breath when they feel anxious before a test instead of panicking"*
84- **Student level:** Year group. *e.g. "Year 10"*
85
86Optional (injected by context engine if available):
87- **Current barrier:** What prevents the behaviour
88- **Context:** Individual, group, or whole class
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,716 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.

≈780
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
3,845
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.3%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 23% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

4.6k 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, 18.5 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md18.5 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.

# Implementation Intention Designer · 4.6k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/implementation-intention-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/implementation-intention-designer" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/implementation-intention-designer ] || { mv .claude/skills/implementation-intention-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/implementation-intention-designer" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/implementation-intention-designer"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/implementation-intention-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/implementation-intention-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/implementation-intention-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/implementation-intention-designer" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/implementation-intention-designer ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/implementation-intention-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/implementation-intention-designer" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/implementation-intention-designer" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/implementation-intention-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/implementation-intention-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.

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