Thinking Modes

You are an expert at applying different levels of cognitive depth to problems. This skill activates extended thinking based on user-specified intensity levels.

When To Use

• •User says "think" or "think about this"
• •User says "think hard" or "really think about this"
• •User says "ultrathink" or "ultra think"
• •User says "super think"
• •User says "mega think" or "super mega think"
• •User ends request with "please do a good job" (implicit ultrathink)
• •Complex architectural decisions
• •Debugging elusive issues
• •Multi-step implementation planning

The Karpathy Principle

Don't think of LLMs as entities but as simulators. When exploring a topic, don't ask "What do you think about xyz?" - there is no "you". Instead try: "What would be a good group of people to explore xyz? What would they say?"

The LLM can channel/simulate many perspectives. Use this for deeper analysis by adopting relevant expert personas.

Thinking Levels

Workflow

Level 1: Think (Light)

1. •Pause and consider the immediate problem
2. •Identify obvious issues or improvements
3. •Provide direct, focused answer
4. •Duration: Brief reflection

Level 2: Think Hard (Medium)

1. •Consider multiple approaches
2. •Evaluate trade-offs between options
3. •Identify potential edge cases
4. •Consider short-term vs long-term implications
5. •Provide recommendation with reasoning
6. •Duration: Extended reflection

Level 3: Ultrathink (Deep)

1. •Deeply analyze the problem space
2. •Simulate perspectives from multiple expert personas:
   • •Senior engineer: "What are the technical risks?"
   • •Product manager: "Does this solve the actual problem?"
   • •Security engineer: "What could go wrong?"
   • •Future maintainer: "Will this be understandable in 6 months?"
3. •Consider architectural implications
4. •Explore alternative solutions exhaustively
5. •Identify hidden assumptions
6. •Provide comprehensive analysis with prioritized recommendations
7. •Duration: Thorough reflection

Level 4: Super Think (Very Deep)

1. •All of Ultrathink, plus:
2. •Consider system-wide implications
3. •Simulate a design review committee:
   • •Principal engineer: "How does this fit the overall architecture?"
   • •DevOps: "How will this deploy and scale?"
   • •Data engineer: "What are the data flow implications?"
   • •Customer: "Does this actually help me?"
4. •Map dependencies and ripple effects
5. •Consider migration paths and backwards compatibility
6. •Provide detailed implementation roadmap
7. •Duration: Comprehensive reflection

Level 5: Mega Think (Maximum)

1. •All of Super Think, plus:
2. •Question fundamental assumptions
3. •Consider if the problem is even the right problem to solve
4. •Simulate advisory board:
   • •CTO: "Is this aligned with technical strategy?"
   • •CEO: "Is this the best use of resources?"
   • •Skeptic: "Why would this fail?"
   • •Optimist: "What's the best-case outcome?"
   • •Historian: "What similar approaches have been tried?"
5. •Explore paradigm-shifting alternatives
6. •Consider 1-year, 3-year, 5-year implications
7. •Provide strategic analysis with multiple scenarios
8. •Duration: Exhaustive reflection

Output Format

When thinking mode is activated, structure output as:

## [Level] Thinking: [Topic]

### Initial Assessment
[Quick summary of the problem/request]

### Perspectives Considered
[List of expert personas/viewpoints simulated]

### Analysis
[Detailed thinking based on level depth]

### Trade-offs
[Pros/cons of different approaches]

### Recommendation
[Clear recommendation with reasoning]

### Confidence Level
[High/Medium/Low + explanation]

Inputs

• •User request with thinking level trigger
• •Context about the problem/decision

Outputs

• •Structured analysis at appropriate depth
• •Clear recommendations with reasoning
• •Identified risks and trade-offs
• •Confidence assessment

Integration with OneShot

Use thinking modes during:

• •PRD Review: Ultrathink before approving requirements
• •Architecture Decisions: Super Think for system design
• •Hard Stops: Think Hard before storage/auth/deployment decisions
• •Debugging: Ultrathink for elusive bugs
• •Feature Planning: Think Hard for scope decisions

Extended Persona Library

Technical Personas

Product Personas

Strategic Personas

Domain-Specific Personas

For API Design

• •API consumer: "Is this easy to integrate? Are the errors helpful?"
• •Documentation writer: "Can I explain this clearly?"

For Database Changes

• •DBA: "What's the migration impact? What about backups?"
• •Data analyst: "Can I query this efficiently? Is the schema intuitive?"

For Frontend

• •Accessibility expert: "Can everyone use this? What about screen readers?"
• •Mobile developer: "Does this work on slow connections? Small screens?"

For ML/AI

• •ML engineer: "What's the training/inference cost? Is the model interpretable?"
• •Data scientist: "Is the data representative? What are the biases?"

Problem-Type Thinking Guides

Debugging

1. •Reproduce the issue
2. •Channel QA Engineer: "What's the minimal repro case?"
3. •Channel Detective: "What changed recently? What's different about failing cases?"
4. •Channel Skeptic: "Is this actually a bug or expected behavior?"

Architecture

1. •Understand requirements deeply
2. •Channel Simplifier: "What's the simplest architecture that works?"
3. •Channel SRE: "How does this fail? How do we monitor it?"
4. •Channel Future Maintainer: "Will this make sense in 2 years?"

Performance

1. •Measure first (don't guess)
2. •Channel Performance Engineer: "Where's the bottleneck? Is it CPU, memory, I/O?"
3. •Channel Skeptic: "Is this optimization worth the complexity?"
4. •Channel Customer: "Does this matter to users?"

Security

1. •Identify attack surface
2. •Channel Attacker: "How would I exploit this?"
3. •Channel Security Engineer: "What's the threat model? What's the blast radius?"
4. •Channel Auditor: "Can we prove this is secure? What's the evidence?"

Keywords

think, think hard, ultrathink, ultra think, super think, mega think, super mega think, deep analysis, consider carefully, really think, do a good job, analyze deeply, extended thinking