i-have-adhd Review — The Tiny Skill That Stopped Claude From Burying the Answer

i-have-adhd is a free, open-source Claude Code and Codex skill that enforces ten ruthless output rules on your coding agent. No preamble. No “Great question!” No buried answers. Just the next action, numbered steps, and a concrete next step. It’s one of the simplest, most effective quality-of-life upgrades you can make to your AI coding workflow.

If you use Claude Code, Codex, or any other coding agent for more than ten minutes a day, you know the pain. You ask a direct question. The agent writes three paragraphs of throat-clearing before getting to the point. It buries the one command you actually need in a wall of prose. It ends with “Hope this helps!” and leaves you scrolling to find what you were supposed to do. The answer was there—you just had to dig for it.

That’s the problem i-have-adhd was built to solve. Created by developer ayghri and released in May 2026, this tiny skill file—just 94 lines of Markdown—exploded on GitHub, hitting over 38,000 stars and 1,400+ forks by September 2026. It trended at #1 on GitHub, hit the front page of Hacker News with 324 points and 256 comments in 12 hours, and spawned a wave of copycat skills.

But does it actually work? Does a simple set of output rules really change how Claude and Codex behave? I dug into the repository, the skill file, user reports, and community feedback to find out.

Three-Minute Human Summary

What it is: i-have-adhd is a skill file—a carefully designed set of ten output rules—that you install into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, or other coding agents. It doesn’t change what the model knows or can do. It changes how it presents information. The rules force the agent to lead with the next action, number multi-step tasks, suppress tangents, restate progress every turn, give concrete time estimates, and eliminate preambles, recaps, and closers.

How well it works: When it works, it works extremely well. Users report that Claude immediately stops rambling and gets to the point. One Reddit user wrote: “Oh my fuck I cannot believe how useful this skill is. Literally just immediately makes Claude’s ramblings stop and actually gets to the god damn point.” Community benchmarks have also found meaningful reductions in output length and token usage. The skill is especially valuable for developers with ADHD—but the community consensus is that the formatting benefits almost everyone.

The catch: The skill’s effectiveness is bounded by the underlying model’s ability to follow instructions. In long sessions, style instructions decay. Multiple users report that Claude follows the rules for a few turns, then gradually slips back into verbose mode. The skill is a patch, not a cure. It also does nothing until you invoke it with /i-have-adhd—installing the plugin alone changes nothing.

Who it’s for: Anyone frustrated by verbose, conversational AI output. Developers with ADHD who struggle with wall-of-text responses. Coders who want actionable answers without scrolling. Teams standardizing output formatting across Claude Code and Codex.

Who should skip: Users of older Claude models who may find the terse style patronizing. Anyone who prefers detailed explanations and context-rich responses. And anyone expecting a permanent, session-long behavior change—the skill requires periodic re-anchoring in long conversations.

General Information

i-have-adhd is a single-purpose skill. It does one thing: reshape how your coding agent communicates. It is not a plugin ecosystem, not a proxy, not a framework. It is a Markdown file with ten rules and a before/after example. And that simplicity is precisely why it works.

How It Works

The skill operates as a persistent output style instruction injected into your agent’s context when you invoke /i-have-adhd. Once active, the rules apply to every response for the rest of the session, not just the next message. They persist across topic changes and only turn off when you say “stop adhd mode” or “normal mode”.

The Five Facts Behind the Rules

The skill is loosely based on The Adult ADHD Tool Kit by J. Russell Ramsay and Anthony L. Rostain, adapted for how an LLM should respond rather than how a human should organize their day. Five core facts drive every rule:

1. Working memory is small. Anything not on screen is forgotten. Don’t ask the reader to “keep in mind X”.
2. Knowing the answer is not doing the answer. The friction between “got it” and “done it” is where work dies.
3. Starting is the hardest step. The first action must be obvious, small, and doable now.
4. Time estimates feel uniform. “A bit of work” and “a few hours” register the same.
5. Dopamine is scarce. Visible progress matters. Buried wins don’t register.

The Ten Rules

The full ruleset lives in SKILL.md:

Before vs. After

The README provides a stark contrast:

Before (vanilla Claude):

Great question! Let me think about this. Your auth flow has a few moving pieces: the middleware, the token verification, and the cookie handling. Looking at src/auth.ts, the verifyToken function (around lines 42-58) seems to be using an older jsonwebtoken API. One approach would be to update the package and rewrite that function. After making the change, you’d want to run the auth tests to confirm nothing breaks. By the way, you might also want to look at your dependency versions overall. Hope this helps! Let me know if you want to dig deeper.

After (with i-have-adhd):

Run npm install jsonwebtoken@latest, then edit src/auth.ts:42.

1. Open src/auth.ts
2. Replace verifyToken (lines 42–58) with the snippet below
3. Run npm test -- auth.spec.ts

Next: paste the first failing line if any test fails.

The difference is night and day. The “after” version respects your time. The “before” version makes you work to find the answer.

Installation & Setup

Claude Code

claude plugin marketplace add ayghri/i-have-adhd
claude plugin install i-have-adhd@i-have-adhd

Then type /i-have-adhd in your session.

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add ayghri/i-have-adhd --ref main
codex plugin add i-have-adhd@i-have-adhd

Invoke explicitly by typing $i-have-adhd. Codex will not activate it automatically.

Always-On Mode (Optional)

For persistent, session-start activation without typing /i-have-adhd each time:

touch ~/.claude/.i-have-adhd-always

A SessionStart hook loads the full ruleset at the start of every session.

Other Agents

Installation instructions are available for Antigravity, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode, Pi, OMP, Qwen Code, and Zed in the repo’s INSTALL.md.

Performance & Real-World Results

What Users Report

The r/ClaudeAI thread “Whoever created the ADHD skill god bless you” captures the sentiment perfectly: “Oh my fuck I cannot believe how useful this skill is. Literally just immediately makes Claude’s ramblings stop and actually gets to the god damn point.”

Community reports also suggest that responses are usually shorter by default, meaning users burn through usage caps more slowly—a tangible cost benefit beyond the readability improvement. One informal benchmark measured output length dropping from 1,884 to 1,066 characters (43% reduction) and token usage falling by 34%.

Accuracy and Safety

The skill is instruction-only. It contains no executable code, no network calls, and no data collection. It is as safe as a Markdown file can be.

The Limitations

Independent testing and community feedback reveal several important caveats:

• Style decay in long sessions. Multiple users report that Claude follows the rules for several turns, then gradually reverts to verbose mode.
• Model-dependent effectiveness. Some users say it “does nothing” or only slightly helps, particularly with newer or more capable models. One user noted it can be counterproductive on models with strong language abilities, making responses feel patronizing.
• Relatively new. Community validation is still nascent, and the specific rules might not suit everyone’s preference, requiring user modification.
• No runtime toggle. The skill lacks a quick on/off switch beyond typing “stop adhd mode.”
• Instruction-following is bounded by the model. The skill is a prompting layer, not a fine-tune. It cannot force compliance.

Pros & Cons

Pros

✅ Immediate, dramatic improvement in output readability for most users
✅ Free and open-source under MIT license
✅ Extremely lightweight—94 lines of Markdown, no dependencies
✅ Safe—no executable code, no data collection, clean security audits
✅ Works across multiple agents—Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, and more
✅ Tunable—fork the repo, edit SKILL.md, swap in your own rules
✅ Based on real clinical ADHD framework—not just arbitrary preferences
✅ Saves usage caps by reducing output length

Cons

❌ Does nothing until invoked—installation alone has zero effect
❌ Style decay in long sessions—requires periodic re-anchoring
❌ Model-dependent—effectiveness varies significantly across Claude versions
❌ Can feel patronizing on already-concise models
❌ No runtime toggle beyond “stop adhd mode”
❌ One-size-fits-all rules may not suit every workflow
❌ No guarantee of compliance—it’s a prompt, not a hard constraint

i-have-adhd vs. Alternatives

i-have-adhd’s key differentiators: cross-agent compatibility, clinical grounding, and zero-code simplicity. It’s not the only option—but it’s the most popular for a reason.

Verdict

i-have-adhd is a rare thing: a tiny, free tool that solves a real, universal frustration with almost no downside. It costs nothing, installs in seconds, requires no code changes, and—when it works—transforms your coding agent from a rambling consultant into a surgical assistant.

But it’s not magic. The skill is a prompt, not a program. It cannot override a model’s fundamental verbosity. In long sessions, it fades. On some models, it barely registers. And it does absolutely nothing until you invoke it.

The real question is whether the effort of typing /i-have-adhd (or setting up always-on mode) is worth the improvement. For most developers, the answer is an emphatic yes. The before/after in the README is not marketing fluff—it’s what actually happens. Claude stops burying the answer. You stop scrolling. You get to work.

Rating: 8.5/10 — Brilliantly simple, genuinely useful, and free. The style decay and model-dependency keep it from perfection, but for a 94-line Markdown file, it punches far above its weight.

References

1. GitHub Repository — ayghri/i-have-adhd. “A skill to stop your coding agent from burying the answer. ADHD-friendly output.” https://github.com/ayghri/i-have-adhd

2. SKILL.md — Full skill definition and rules. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ayghri/i-have-adhd/main/skills/i-have-adhd/SKILL.md

3. Reddit r/ClaudeAI — “Whoever created the ADHD skill god bless you.” https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1v8o1jn/whoever_created_the_adhd_skill_god_bless_you/

4. Reddit r/ClaudeWorkflows — “[Workflow] Claude Code Skill: Enforce Direct, Action-Oriented Responses with /i-have-adhd.” https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeWorkflows/comments/1tcf666/workflow_claude_code_skill_enforce_direct/