Critical Thinking

A Model Context Protocol server for critical, narrated, sequential thinking. Think one step at a time, out loud — with required confidence calibration and adversarial self-critique on every thought.

It fuses three disciplines:

1. Sequential thinking — break problems into ordered, numbered steps; revise; branch.
2. Thinking out loud — explain each thought in first-person, exploratory voice. Putting half-formed reasoning into words is itself the double-check on it.
3. Critical self-examination — every thought is paired with confidence, assumptions, critique, and a counter-argument.

The single tool is criticalthinking. Every call must include the four critical-thinking fields — there is no opt-out, by design.

Install & usage → docs/usage.md. One-line install:

go install github.com/jacaudi/critical-thinking/cmd/critical-thinking@latest

Or install the Claude Code plugin under plugins/critical-thinking/: it auto-installs the server, adds an always-on two-gate verification skill, and a hook that activates it every turn. See its README.

One-call example

Request:

{
  "thought": "I think we should normalize first because reads dominate writes.",
  "thoughtNumber": 1, "totalThoughts": 3, "nextThoughtNeeded": true,
  "confidence": 0.6,
  "assumptions": ["read:write ratio is ~10:1"],
  "critique": "Drifted into solution mode without confirming the ratio.",
  "counterArgument": "If writes dominate, monolith-first is simpler.",
  "nextStepRationale": "Verify the read:write ratio before committing to normalization."
}

Response (structuredContent):

{
  "thoughtNumber": 1, "totalThoughts": 3, "nextThoughtNeeded": true,
  "branches": [], "thoughtHistoryLength": 1, "sessionConfidence": 0.6
}

Pass an optional episodeId (any string) to keep independent lines of reasoning isolated; reuse it within a problem and switch it for a new one. sessionConfidence is the mean over the current episode's trunk thoughts.

The text content is a rendered transcript in first-person, exploratory voice. Every call must send thoughtNumber and totalThoughts (both required, ≥ 1); if thoughtNumber exceeds totalThoughts the server raises totalThoughts to match. Keep each field to one tight sentence — the tool description asks for that brevity; the server does not enforce a hard limit. The full contract lives in the tool description itself.

Resources

The server exposes thinking://current — a per-session JSON snapshot of the full thought history (trunk + branches, all critical-thinking fields preserved).

Documentation

• docs/usage.md — install, MCP-server & CLI-pipe usage, a worked session
  • Install · As an MCP server · As a CLI pipe · Worked session
• docs/clients.md — Claude Desktop, Codex CLI, VS Code, Cursor recipes
• docs/configuration.md — env vars, HTTP endpoints, logging, CORS, session lifecycle
• docs/migration.md — breaking changes since http-sequential-thinking
• docs/development.md — building, testing, debugging with MCP Inspector
• plugins/critical-thinking/ — the Claude Code plugin (bundled server install + always-on critical-thinking skill)

License

MIT.