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https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd

ADHD β€” a skill for coding agents. Tree-of-thought with pruning, built on the Claude Agent SDK. Fans out parallel divergent thoughts under different cognitive frames, scores, prunes traps, deepens the survivors. The no-brainer skill for creative and interdisciplinary work.
https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd

adhd agents ai ai-agents brainstorm chain-of-thought claude claude-agent-sdk creativity divergent-thinking ideation interdisciplinary llm llm-tools nodejs prompt-engineering tree-of-thought typescript

Last synced: 20 days ago
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ADHD β€” a skill for coding agents. Tree-of-thought with pruning, built on the Claude Agent SDK. Fans out parallel divergent thoughts under different cognitive frames, scores, prunes traps, deepens the survivors. The no-brainer skill for creative and interdisciplinary work.

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README 

          


  

    ADHD for Claude Code

  




# ADHD β€” a skill for agents



[![CI](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/actions/workflows/ci.yml)

[![npm](https://img.shields.io/npm/v/adhd-agent.svg)](https://www.npmjs.com/package/adhd-agent)

[![license](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg)](./LICENSE)

[![Node](https://img.shields.io/badge/node-%3E%3D18-brightgreen)](./documentation/install.md)

[![Paper](https://img.shields.io/badge/paper-preprint-blueviolet)](https://adhdstack.github.io/)

[![Featured: The New Stack](https://img.shields.io/badge/featured-The%20New%20Stack-ff5500)](https://thenewstack.io/claude-code-adhd/)



> **An architectural fix for premature convergence in autoregressive reasoning.**



Linear Chain-of-Thought anchors on whatever it says first. Tree-of-Thought widens the search but still walks a single shared context, so the anchoring persists across branches. **ADHD treats this as an architectural problem, not a prompting one** β€” it spawns N isolated reasoning processes under deliberately distorted cognitive frames, with zero shared context during divergence, then runs a separate critic pass to score, cluster, prune traps, and deepen the survivors.



Reach for it on **design decisions, fuzzy debugging, naming, API surface design, strategy, and any prompt of the shape *"give me a few ways to…"***.



πŸ“„ **Preprint:** [ADHD: Parallel Divergent Ideation for Coding Agents](https://adhdstack.github.io/) Β· πŸ‘€ **Author:** Udit Akhouri β€” [@akhouriudit](https://x.com/akhouriudit) Β· [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/udit-akhouri-10160a168/)



---



## Side-by-side: baseline vs ADHD



One eval problem, same model, two strategies. Full transcripts in [`bench/results.json`](./bench/results.json).



> **Problem.** *"We have a CLI that calls an LLM and it sometimes hangs for 90 seconds. Design the right retry/timeout/UX strategy."*



🟦 Baseline (single-shot)

🟧 ADHD



Walks through four **textbook** patterns:



1. Progressive timeout with staged UI (10s / 30s / 60s)

2. Fast-fail + exponential backoff retry

3. Hedged parallel requests

4. Streaming with keepalive



Lands on a **hybrid** recommendation β€” 15s first-token timeout, 30s between-token timeout, 90s absolute, one auto-retry. Sensible. Google SRE Book ch. 22. The answer a senior engineer gives in 30 seconds.



**What's missing:** no traps named, no acknowledgement that the *user* might want to bail out of a slow request, no questioning of the "wait then retry the same model" frame.



Spawns 6 isolated frames, surfaces a **wide set** of 30+ ideas across `economic-incentive`, `async-control-surface`, `gamification`, `perceptual-distortion`, `collective-intelligence`, `redundancy-race` clusters, then:



- β˜… **Non-obvious pick:** *"rage-quit = instant abort + branch to cheaper/faster model"* β€” a button that pulses hotter the longer you wait. One click cancels and re-submits to Haiku-class. The thing baseline never considers: **the slow model might just be the wrong model for this prompt.**

- Plus shortlist: scout-fork to alternate endpoints at 30s; daemonize the CLI with ticket IDs; race 3 LLM replicas, cache the winner.

- **20 traps flagged with one-line reasons** β€” including the cute "stream tokens in reverse" and "patience-token billing" ideas before they cost engineering time.



Independent LLM judge on this problem: **breadth 9 vs 6, novelty 8 vs 3, trap detection ~8 vs ~2.** Methodology in [documentation/evals.md](./documentation/evals.md).



---



## Featured



- πŸ”Œ **Adopted by [repowire](https://github.com/prassanna-ravishankar/repowire)** β€” the first OSS project to officially ship ADHD. Its maintainer ported the framework onto repowire's mesh-orchestrator primitives in [PR #313](https://github.com/prassanna-ravishankar/repowire/pull/313) (merged): frames become frame-shifted temp peers, the generator/critic split maps onto separate peers vs. the orchestrator's own turn, attribution via `metadata.based-on` (MIT).

- πŸ“° **[The New Stack](https://thenewstack.io/claude-code-adhd/)** ran a feature story on ADHD for Claude Code.

- πŸ’¬ **OpenClaw / multi-agent community** is independently testing it across agents. One tester: *"I read it, installed it on two different agents… I actually love it. This is great. I thought this was gonna be another useless post. But no, it wasn't."*

- πŸ”¬ An independent **[evidence-based research review](https://github.com/testdouble/han/blob/adhd-swarm-research/docs/research/adhd-application-to-han.md)** (11 sources, 8 validation rounds) was published against the method β€” findings tracked openly as [issues #16–#18](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/issues).



---



## Community



πŸ‘‰ [**Join the ADHD community β†’**](https://tally.so/r/WO1Nzj) as a contributor, maintainer, early adopter, or just a member. One short form. We coordinate frame contributions, eval problems, integrations, and adopter onboarding there.



---



## Early adopters



Projects that officially ship or integrate ADHD:



| Project | What they did | Status |

|---|---|---|

| [**repowire**](https://github.com/prassanna-ravishankar/repowire) | Ported ADHD onto repowire's mesh-orchestrator primitives β€” frames become frame-shifted temp peers, generator/critic split maps to separate peers vs. the orchestrator's turn. Ships in the default orchestrator template. ([PR #313](https://github.com/prassanna-ravishankar/repowire/pull/313)) | βœ… Merged Β· MIT attribution |

| [**mstack**](https://github.com/mayank-io/mstack) | Vendored ADHD as the `think` plugin in their Claude plugin marketplace β€” wires the divergent-then-converge loop into mstack for architecture, naming, API design, and fuzzy debugging. | βœ… Shipped Β· MIT attribution |

| [**zk-flow-oss**](https://github.com/matt-metivier/zk-flow-oss) | Adapted ADHD's `IDEATION_FRAMES` into their critique workflow ([`src/workflows/critique.src.js`](https://github.com/matt-metivier/zk-flow-oss/blob/main/src/workflows/critique.src.js)) as a pre-pass to reduce anchoring bias before review. | βœ… Shipped Β· MIT attribution |

| [**han**](https://github.com/testdouble/han) | Published an [evidence-based research application](https://github.com/testdouble/han/blob/adhd-swarm-research/docs/research/adhd-application-to-han.md) of ADHD onto Han's plugin model β€” 11 sources, 8 validation rounds. Findings landed as issues [#16](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/issues/16)–[#18](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/issues/18). | βœ… Research integration |

| [**app-library** (yslee5005)](https://github.com/yslee5005/app-library) | Built an `expert-thinker` MoAI agent on the ADHD pattern β€” tree-of-thought with isolated divergence and a separate critic pass. | βœ… Shipped |

| [**striatum**](https://github.com/halbritt/striatum) | Installer scaffold for Claude Code recommends `npx skills add UditAkhourii/adhd` for architecture, API design, and naming work. | βœ… Shipped |

| [**awesome-prompts**](https://github.com/ai-boost/awesome-prompts) | Packaged the ADHD loop as a standalone prompt (`adhd_parallel_ideation_skill.txt`) for users without the skill installed. | βœ… Shipped |

| [**nix-skills**](https://github.com/sudosubin/nix-skills) | Nix packaging of the ADHD skill (pinned to commit `770834e`) for the Nix-based agent-skills ecosystem. | βœ… Shipped |

| [**caioniehues/adhd**](https://github.com/caioniehues/adhd) | Fork with a customized `SKILL.md` that re-points install + docs to their own distribution while keeping upstream attribution. | βœ… Fork Β· attribution |

| [**ktg-one/adhd**](https://github.com/ktg-one/adhd) | Fork used as a personal "codified model of how my brain works" β€” wired into the [may-2026-kb](https://github.com/ktg-one/may-2026-kb) knowledge base as a cognitive-architecture pattern. | βœ… Fork Β· in use |



Shipping ADHD in your project? Open a PR adding it here, or [open an issue](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/issues/new) and we'll add you.



---



## Install



One command, auto-detects your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Antigravity, Codex, Cline, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, and ~50 more):



```bash

npx skills add UditAkhourii/adhd

```



Then invoke explicitly with `/adhd "your problem"`, or let it auto-trigger on ideation intents.



### Codex quick path



If the universal command above fails to register inside Codex (some Codex builds discover skills from a specific path), force the target:



```bash

npx skills add UditAkhourii/adhd -a codex -g

```



Or install manually into Codex's skills directory:



```bash

mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills/adhd

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/main/skills/adhd/SKILL.md \

  -o ~/.codex/skills/adhd/SKILL.md

```



Restart Codex. `/adhd "design a rate limiter"` should now route through the skill. The skill ships with a single-line description (≀600 chars) specifically because some Codex builds truncate or reject multi-line YAML block descriptions.



CLI and library installs, manual curl for other agents, and per-platform paths are in **[documentation/install.md](./documentation/install.md)**.



```bash

npm install -g adhd-agent     # CLI

npm install adhd-agent        # library

```



---



## Quickstart



```bash

adhd "design a rate limiter that survives a leader election"

adhd "name this function" --frames 3 --ideas 8 --top 2

```



```ts

import { run, renderText } from "adhd-agent";



const result = await run({ problem: "How should we shard this queue under bursty load?", framesPerRun: 5, topK: 3 });

console.log(renderText(result));

// result.shortlist Β· result.nonObviousPick Β· result.traps Β· result.deepened Β· result.clusters

```



Full reference: **[documentation/api.md](./documentation/api.md)**.



---



## How it works



A two-phase loop with a hard wall between the phases.



1. **Diverge.** Pick N cognitive frames. Spawn N parallel, **isolated** Agent calls β€” each sees the problem plus one frame's vantage prompt, and a system prompt that forbids evaluation. Branches never see each other, so no anchoring.

2. **Focus.** A separate critic call scores every idea (`novelty / viability / fit`), flags traps with reasons, clusters by underlying angle, and deepens the top-K survivors into sketches with risks and first steps.



The generator-critic split is **mechanical** β€” separate LLM calls with opposite system prompts β€” not promised in one prompt. Deep dive: **[documentation/how-it-works.md](./documentation/how-it-works.md)**. How it differs from CoT and ToT: **[documentation/vs-cot-and-tot.md](./documentation/vs-cot-and-tot.md)**.



---



## Results



Mean scores across 6 open-ended engineering problems (0–10), ADHD vs a single-shot baseline at the same model, judged by an independent LLM with a skeptical-staff-engineer prompt, A/B order randomized.



| Dimension          | ADHD     | Baseline | Ξ”         | Ratio |

| ------------------ | -------: | -------: | --------: | ----: |

| breadth            | **9.00** | 4.83     | **+4.17** | 1.9Γ—  |

| novelty            | **7.83** | 2.67     | **+5.17** | 2.9Γ—  |

| trap detection     | **9.50** | 1.83     | **+7.67** | 5.2Γ—  |

| actionability      | **9.50** | 6.50     | **+3.00** | 1.5Γ—  |

| builder usefulness | **7.67** | 6.83     | **+0.83** | 1.1Γ—  |



**ADHD wins 5 of 6 problems.** Biggest gap is trap detection β€” baselines rarely name the seductive-but-broken ideas. Methodology, limitations, and how to reproduce: **[documentation/evals.md](./documentation/evals.md)**.



---



## Documentation



| Page | What's in it |

|---|---|

| [Install](./documentation/install.md) | Every install path β€” skill, CLI, library, Agent SDK, per-platform |

| [How it works](./documentation/how-it-works.md) | The two-phase loop + architecture (context, pruning, orchestration) |

| [vs CoT & ToT](./documentation/vs-cot-and-tot.md) | Structural comparison, the three load-bearing differences, frames vs personas |

| [Frames](./documentation/frames.md) | The 15 cognitive frames, how selection works, how to author your own |

| [When to use](./documentation/when-to-use.md) | Use / don't use, why it shines on creative work, cost & speed |

| [CLI & API](./documentation/api.md) | CLI flags, library types, using ADHD inside your own agent |

| [Evals](./documentation/evals.md) | Methodology, headline numbers, limitations, roadmap |



Also: [SKILL.md](./skills/adhd/SKILL.md) (the runnable skill) Β· [SOURCE-SPEC.md](./SOURCE-SPEC.md) (original spec) Β· [CONTRIBUTING.md](./CONTRIBUTING.md) Β· [the preprint](https://adhdstack.github.io/).



---



## Star History





  Star History Chart




---



## External reviews



- [**Han plugin compatibility analysis**](https://github.com/testdouble/han/blob/adhd-swarm-research/docs/research/adhd-application-to-han.md) by [@mxriverlynn](https://www.reddit.com/user/mxriverlynn) β€” evidence-based review using Han's own `/research` skill, 11 sources, 8 validation rounds. Findings tracked as issues [#16](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/issues/16), [#17](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/issues/17), [#18](https://github.com/UditAkhourii/adhd/issues/18).



---



## License



MIT License.



ADHD operationalizes the *Divergent Ideation* source spec ([SOURCE-SPEC.md](./SOURCE-SPEC.md)). The runnable skill is at [`skills/adhd/SKILL.md`](./skills/adhd/SKILL.md).



---



## Contact



**Udit Akhouri** β€” author of the preprint and maintainer.



[adhdstack.github.io](https://adhdstack.github.io/) Β· [@akhouriudit](https://x.com/akhouriudit) Β· [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/udit-akhouri-10160a168/) Β· [researchudit@gmail.com](mailto:researchudit@gmail.com) Β· [@UditAkhourii](https://github.com/UditAkhourii)



Open to collaboration with research labs and applied-AI teams working on reasoning, planning, and agentic systems.