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prism — Claude Code skill: what it does, how to install

Reviews a claim, plan, or file through independent lenses and exposes the key disagreement. Use it before shipping when one review is insufficient.

Install into Claude Code · Skills CLI (Vercel) All methods and platforms ↓
npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill prism -a claude-code
Open on GitHub

What prism does

prism reads an artifact end to end, then selects 2 to 5 lenses tied to distinct failure modes such as correctness, security, readability, cost, or adversarial use. Each lens returns pass, fail, or unclear with one load-bearing reason.

It then groups the verdicts into full agreement, agreement for different reasons, or disagreement. When views conflict, the output is one next question that can resolve the split or assign clear owners. It never averages verdicts.

The skill runs only when the user explicitly invokes it. That matters: multiple lenses are a deliberate resource spend, not automatic proof that an artifact is sound.

What it helps with

  • review a migration plan across distinct failure modes
  • expose a conflict between security and cost
  • stress-test a claim before shipping
  • identify one question that resolves reviewer disagreement

Example prompts for the agent

  • Use the prism skill to review this migration plan and give me the one question that resolves any disagreement.
  • Run prism on this file through correctness and security lenses.
  • Apply prism to my claim and do not average conflicting verdicts.

How to install prism

1Skills CLI (Vercel)

npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill prism -a claude-code

2Manually: put the files in place

~/.claude/skills/prism/SKILL.md

Copy the whole skill folder; for one project use .claude/skills/prism/

Step by step, with commands for each platform: How to install skills in Claude Code: five ways

Questions about prism

How do I install prism in Claude Code?

Run npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill prism -a claude-code, then run npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill prism -a claude-code again. The skill file is at ~/.claude/skills/prism/SKILL.md.

What does prism do?

It reviews one artifact through independent lenses and compares their verdicts. If the lenses disagree, it returns the question that can resolve the disagreement.

Why does prism require explicit invocation?

Model invocation is disabled for this skill. You invoke it deliberately because using multiple lenses incurs a separate resource spend.

Source text

SKILL.md · MIT
---
name: prism
disable-model-invocation: true
description: "Split one artifact — a claim, plan, or file — across 2 to 5 independent lenses, one per genuinely distinct failure mode (correctness, security, readability, cost, adversarial-user), and return their convergence: where they agree, where they disagree, and the single next question that resolves the disagreement. Use when one reviewer isn't enough because the failure modes are heterogeneous, or a claim looks strong to its author and needs cross-lens pressure before it ships."
---

Split one artifact across independent lenses and return where they converge and where they don't.

## Goal

The result is a picture of where the lenses agree, where they disagree, and the smallest question that would resolve the disagreement. Not a checklist, and never an average — averaging the lenses is the failure this skill exists to prevent.

## Workflow

1. Read the artifact end to end before choosing the lenses.
2. Choose one lens per genuinely distinct failure mode — correctness, security, readability, cost, adversarial-user, and the like. Two candidate lenses that share a failure mode are one lens, not two. In practice this lands between **2 and 5**: below 2 there is nothing to converge, and past 5 you are almost always padding with lenses that overlap. There is no default count — the artifact's distinct failure modes set it.
3. Through each lens, produce a one-line verdict — pass, fail, or unclear — with its single most load-bearing reason. No hedging list; if a reason isn't load-bearing, drop it.
4. Compare the verdicts and group them: full agreement, agreement for different reasons, disagreement.
5. Where there is disagreement, name the single next question whose answer would move it into agreement or a clean split with owners. That question is the output, not the individual verdicts.
6. Where every lens agrees, return the shared verdict with the reasons that were load-bearing for at least two lenses.

## Rules

- Independent lenses, not roles. A "security reviewer" and a "senior security reviewer" are one lens, not two.
- One reason per lens — the load-bearing one. A lens that returns a list is hedging.
- Disagreement is the product. A prism that agrees on everything did not need to be run.
- Never average. If two lenses split, the answer is the question that resolves the split, not the midpoint of their verdicts.
- Draw the lenses fresh for the artifact in hand. A lens useful for a spec may be useless for a migration; don't carry lenses across artifacts.
- Don't manufacture disagreement. A run that finds none returns the shared verdict and stops.
- User-invoked on purpose: plural lenses are an opt-in spend, and their convergence must never masquerade as automatic proof, so this fires only when deliberately reached for.

## Verification

The result reads as a picture, not a checklist — a reader sees which lenses agreed, which disagreed, and the one question that matters, and can act on it without re-running the prism. If they'd need to re-run it to know what to do next, step 5 was skipped.

© LilMGenius · MIT · LilMGenius/paperthin

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