Claude Has an ADHD Mode, and It's Genius

Most AI answers bury the point. You ask a simple question and get three paragraphs of “great question, let’s explore this” before you ever reach anything useful. A developer got sick of that, built a fix, and put it on GitHub for free. It’s called i-have-adhd, and it’s sitting at over 18,000 stars.

The skill’s own description says it best: output isn’t only shorter, it’s shaped so it’s easy to act on. Once it’s active, every response follows 10 rules:

1. Lead with actionable steps, not context
2. Number multi-step tasks, one bounded action per step
3. End with one concrete next action that takes under 2 minutes
4. No tangents, finish the current thing first
5. Restate progress and the current step in each message
6. Give specific time estimates (“15 minutes,” not “a while”)
7. Make completed work visible and concrete
8. State errors matter-of-factly, no “uh oh”
9. Cap any list at 5 items
10. No preamble, no recap, no closing pleasantries

It’s not rigid about it either. The rules step aside for real explanations, anything destructive, debugging spirals, or genuine ambiguity, it’s built to be direct, not robotic.

It’s a Claude Code plugin, which means you need Claude Code, not regular Claude.ai chat, to install it this way.

Getting Claude Code itself, if you don’t have it:

1. Go to claude.com/download and download the desktop app for your computer, Mac, Windows, and Linux are all supported
2. Install it like any other app (double-click the file, follow the prompts)
3. Sign in with your Claude account

Installing the skill:

Whether you’re using the desktop app or a terminal window, Claude Code works the same way, you type commands right into the chat box. Open Claude Code and type this:

/plugin marketplace add ayghri/i-have-adhd

Then type this:

/plugin install i-have-adhd@i-have-adhd

You’ll see a confirmation. If it doesn’t say “Plugin is now active,” type /reload-plugins and it will be.

Now turn it on:

/i-have-adhd

The rules apply for the rest of that session. Say “stop adhd mode” or “normal mode” any time to turn it off, or remove it completely, same way, typed right into the chat:

/plugin uninstall i-have-adhd@i-have-adhd
/plugin marketplace remove i-have-adhd

If you don’t use Claude Code and don’t want to set it up, you can still get the same behavior in regular Claude. This isn’t the official GitHub tool itself, that one only runs inside Claude Code, but it’s the same 10 rules turned into a plain instruction you paste at the start of any chat.

From now on, format your answers this way: lead with the actionable step, not the context. Number any multi-step process, one action per step. End every answer with one concrete next action I can do in under 2 minutes. No tangents, finish the current point before raising a new one. Restate what's done and what's next whenever we're mid-task. Give specific time estimates, not vague ones. Make finished work visible and concrete, don't say it's done, show it. State any errors or problems plainly, don't soften them. Cap any list at 5 items. Cut the preamble, the recap, and the closing pleasantries. Give me the answer, nothing else.

Paste it once, then ask your next question.

The takeaway

One free, real tool, 18,000 people already voted with a star, and two honest ways to get the same result. Use the real Claude Code plugin if you’ve already got Claude Code, or the plain instruction above if you don’t. Either way, the difference shows up in the first response.