Second Thoughts
Nudges you to sanity-check an AI answer before you act on it.
What it does
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Install in under a minute
Mac or Linux, after you download
unzip second-thoughts.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/Windows PowerShell
Expand-Archive second-thoughts.zip -DestinationPath $HOME\.claude\skills- Start a new Claude Code session so it sees the skill.
- Ask in plain words, for example: "Use Second Thoughts on this project."
- Unzip the download, then zip just the second-thoughts folder if your computer added an extra folder.
- In Claude.ai, open Settings, then Capabilities, and upload it under Skills.
- Turn the skill on and ask Claude to use it.
Second Thoughts uses the open SKILL.md format, so it also works in agents like Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and Codex. Copy the second-thoughts folder into that agent's skills folder, for example .cursor/skills/ or .github/skills/ in your project.
What's inside
The 5 main sections of the SKILL.md, in order.
- Why this exists
- When to offer the nudge
- When not to
- Writing the prompts
- Output format
In the download: LICENSE.txt, NOTICE.md, SKILL.md
Credit and license
Second Thoughts is a renamed, packaged copy of discernment-nudge by Anthropic (github.com/anthropics/skills), used under the Apache-2.0 license. The license and a list of changes ship inside the download.
Questions
Does Second Thoughts work in Claude.ai, not just Claude Code?
Yes. In Claude.ai, upload the second-thoughts folder as a zip in Settings under Capabilities. It also works in other agents that support Agent Skills, like Cursor, Gemini CLI and GitHub Copilot.
What do I get?
A zip with the second-thoughts folder: its SKILL.md (2,212 words) and its license files. One payment, instant download.
Who made Second Thoughts?
It's a renamed, packaged copy of discernment-nudge by Anthropic, used under the Apache-2.0 license. The license and a list of changes ship inside the download.