thinking-bounded-rationality
Apply Herbert Simon's Bounded Rationality and satisficing to make good-enough decisions under real-world constraints. Use for design decisions under time pressure, recognizing cognitive limits, and setting appropriate stopping criteria.
npx skills add majiayu000/claude-skill-registry --skill thinking-bounded-rationality --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Bounded Rationality and Satisficing ## Overview Herbert Simon's Bounded Rationality recognizes that human decision-making is limited by three fundamental constraints: available information, cognitive capacity, and time. Rather than pursuing optimal solutions (which is often impossible), Simon proposed "satisficing"—a portmanteau of satisfy + suffice—choosing solutions that are good enough to meet requirements. **Core Principle:** "Decision makers can satisfice either by finding optimum solutions for a simplified world, or by finding satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world." — Herbert Simon ## When to Use - Making design decisions under time pressure - Facing complex problems with incomplete information - Analysis paralysis is blocking progress - Optimization costs exceed potential benefits - Need to set stopping criteria for searches/research - Evaluating when "good enough" beats "perfect" - Resource allocation under constraints Decision flow: ``` Decision needed? → yes → Do you have perfect information? → rarely ↘ Is optimization cost justified? → no → SATISFICE ↘ yes → Optimize (but verify cost) ``` ## The Three Constraints ### 1. Information Bounds **What you can kno
- Overview
- When to Use
- The Three Constraints
- 1. Information Bounds
- 2. Cognitive Bounds
- 3. Time Bounds
- Satisficing vs. Optimizing
- When to Satisfice
- When to Optimize
- The Satisficing Process
- Step 1: Define Aspiration Level
- Step 2: Search Sequentially
- Step 3: Adjust Aspiration If Needed
- Step 4: Commit and Move On
What does the thinking-bounded-rationality skill do?
Apply Herbert Simon's Bounded Rationality and satisficing to make good-enough decisions under real-world constraints. Use for design decisions under time pressure, recognizing cognitive limits, and setting appropriate stopping criteria.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add majiayu000/claude-skill-registry --skill thinking-bounded-rationality --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From majiayu000/claude-skill-registry, a repository with 534 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.