Bounded Rationality

Bounded Rationality is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by tjboudreaux in cc-thinking-skills.

969 stars133 forkson tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skillsAdded 2026/08/21+1% in starsRepository updated 2026/08/07

agent-skillsai-toolsanthropicclaudeclaude-codecritical-thinkingdecision-makingfirst-principlesmental-modelsproblem-solvingsystems-thinking

Install in seconds

Install Bounded Rationality

Copy Bounded Rationality into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills/tree/main/skills/thinking-bounded-rationality ~/.claude/skills/thinking-bounded-rationality

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/thinking-bounded-rationality/SKILL.md in tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/thinking-bounded-rationality
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Bounded Rationality does

Bounded Rationality helps you set a clear sufficiency threshold before searching, then stop at the first option that meets it. Use it for open-ended comparisons or investigations with limited time or context.

Bounded Rationality is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Bounded Rationality comes from a repository tagged agent-skills, ai-tools, anthropic, claude and claude-code.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Bounded Rationality

Under finite tool, context, and time budgets, stop at the first option that meets a predeclared aspiration level. Optimize only when the good-to-best gap is worth the remaining budget.

When to Use

Search or option comparison has no natural endpoint and could consume the turn budget.
Multiple options would clear the requirement and further comparison has diminishing returns.
The decision is reversible or low-stakes relative to more search.
You are gathering context beyond what the decision needs to ship.

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Bounded Rationality

What else does tjboudreaux publish alongside Bounded Rationality?
Bounded Rationality is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Circle Of Competence, Effectuation and First Principles. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Bounded Rationality does, and is maintained by tjboudreaux in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills page.
How does Bounded Rationality compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Bounded Rationality ranks #1388 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Bounded Rationality against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.