Scientific Method

Scientific Method is a Quality 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 Scientific Method

Copy Scientific Method 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-scientific-method ~/.claude/skills/thinking-scientific-method

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-scientific-method/SKILL.md in tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/thinking-scientific-method
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: Quality — 1354 skills

What Scientific Method does

Scientific Method ranks competing falsifiable causes for a symptom and runs the cheapest observation that best separates them. Use it to localize bugs, incidents, or anomalies before fixing.

Scientific Method is cataloged under Quality on DirSkills. Scientific Method comes from a repository tagged agent-skills, ai-tools, anthropic, claude and claude-code.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Scientific Method (Hypothesis Differential)

When a symptom could come from several places, enumerate competing falsifiable hypotheses and spend the cheapest observation on the one that best discriminates among them. After each observation, keep only hypotheses that still fit, then prefer the survivor with the fewest unsupported assumptions as the working explanation.

When to Use

A bug, incident, or anomaly has more than one plausible cause.
You can observe code, logs, diffs, traces, tests, configs, or data now.
You must localize the faulty file, function, branch, config, or invariant before fixing.
Competing explanations fit the same surface facts and you need a discriminating check.

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

Frequently asked about Scientific Method

What else does tjboudreaux publish alongside Scientific Method?
Scientific Method is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from tjboudreaux/cc-thinking-skills, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Bounded Rationality, Circle Of Competence and Effectuation. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Scientific Method 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 Scientific Method compare to other Quality skills?
Scientific Method ranks #865 by stars among the 1354 Quality skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Benchmark, Benchmark Optimization Loop and API Design Patterns. 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 Scientific Method against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.