i-have-adhd is a skill for coding agents, distributed as a Claude Code plugin, that stops the assistant from burying the answer inside preamble, recap, and closers.
What it is
i-have-adhd lives in the Claude Code plugin and skill ecosystem, reflected in its topics claude-code-plugin and claude-skills. It is a single skill that rewrites how a coding assistant phrases its replies rather than what those replies contain. With the skill active, the assistant leads with the next action, numbers multi-step work, and ends with one concrete next step instead of "Hope this helps!" The repository is written in Python, licensed under MIT, and carries 48,174 stars, 2,802 forks, and 73 open issues, with the last push on 2026-09-16.
The concrete problem is scroll cost. A reply that opens with "Great question!" and walks through middleware, token verification, and cookie handling before reaching the fix forces the reader to hunt for the instruction. The README's own before-and-after pair makes the swap explicit: the verbose reply talks around verifyToken in src/auth.ts at lines 42–58, while the compliant reply opens with npm install jsonwebtoken@latest and the edit target, then lists three numbered steps and closes with "paste the first failing line if any test fails." It replaces the default chat-style answer format of a coding assistant with an action-first format. The behavior is defined by ten rules in skills/i-have-adhd/SKILL.md, covering preamble, recap, tangents, list length, error tone, time estimates, and visible wins.
Key capabilities
- Enforces rule one, lead with the next action, so the first line names the command or the file rather than the reasoning.
- Numbers multi-step tasks and restates the current state every turn, so the reader never reconstructs where the work stands.
- Caps lists at five items and suppresses tangents, which keeps side observations about dependency versions out of the answer.
- Requires specific time estimates in minutes rather than vague phrases, and reports errors matter-of-factly.
- Ships ten rules in full text at
skills/i-have-adhd/SKILL.md, invoked per session as /i-have-adhd.
- Supports local tuning: fork the repository, edit
SKILL.md, then run claude plugin uninstall i-have-adhd, claude plugin marketplace remove i-have-adhd, claude plugin marketplace add, and claude plugin install i-have-adhd@i-have-adhd.
- Provides translated documentation for readers of British English, Chinese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Iranian Persian, and Thai.
Who uses it and how
- Developers running a coding assistant interactively who want the fix on the first line instead of after a paragraph of acknowledgement.
- Small teams that install the same plugin so every assistant reply in the group follows one predictable shape.
- Users who fork the repository and edit
SKILL.md when the upstream rules do not match their own tolerance for explanation.
- Non-English-speaking developers who follow the translated README sections rather than the English one.
Getting started
Paste the install prompt from the README into the CLI, which directs the agent to the repository and to its AGENTS.md for instructions, or follow INSTALL.md. Installation is done through the plugin marketplace commands, after which the assistant is restarted and the skill is invoked with /i-have-adhd.
How it compares
No paid products this project replaces are listed among the provided facts, and no comparable tools are named either. It stands alone in this registry: a single-purpose prompt-shaping skill for the Claude Code plugin ecosystem with no stated alternative or commercial counterpart.
When to use it — and when not to
It suits anyone who finds assistant replies hard to scan, and the rule set is narrow enough that installing it costs nothing but a restart. It should not be chosen by people who want the reasoning shown before the conclusion, since the rules explicitly suppress tangents, preamble, and recap. Honest limits: the skill changes phrasing only, so it does not make an answer correct, the repository shows 73 open issues, and tuning beyond the defaults requires forking SKILL.md and reinstalling the plugin under its own name.
project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline
ADHD-friendly outputs. No ADHD diagnosis needed!
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Install
Copy/paste into your CLI prompt:
Install the i-have-adhd skill/plugin from https://github.com/ayghri/i-have-adhd, refer to the repo's AGENTS.md for instructions.
Or 🔗 check the installation instructions.
What it does
A skill for your coding assistant that stops it from burying the answer. Action first. Steps numbered. No "Hope this helps!"
Kacper Rutkiewicz | AI Made Simple has made a good breakdown of an earlier version of the skill.
What changes
The rules
10 rules. Full text in SKILL.md.
- Lead with the next action.
- Number multi-step tasks.
- End with one concrete next step.
- Suppress tangents.
- Restate state every turn.
- Specific time estimates (minutes, not "a bit").
- Make wins visible.
- Matter-of-fact errors.
- Cap lists to 5 items.
- No preamble. No recap. No closers.
Tune it
Fork, edit skills/i-have-adhd/SKILL.md, then swap your copy in:
claude plugin uninstall i-have-adhd # drop the upstream copy first:
claude plugin marketplace remove i-have-adhd # fork and upstream share both names
claude plugin marketplace add <your-username>/i-have-adhd
claude plugin install i-have-adhd@i-have-adhd
Restart your coding assistant, then re-invoke /i-have-adhd.
Credits
Loosely based on The Adult ADHD Tool Kit by J. Russell Ramsay and Anthony L. Rostain. Adapted for how an LLM should respond, not how a human should organize their day.
License
MIT.
Star ⭐ if it saved you one scroll past one "Great question!"