yak-shave-detector

yak-shave-detector is an agent for Claude Code from fatihkan/badi. It costs 18 tokens per session (318 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A task-scope checker that compares your current work with the original goal. It flags when a task is drifting into unnecessary side work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it while coding or planning to decide whether to continue, correct course, or stop and return to the main task.
Why use it?
It helps prevent yak shaving, the habit of spending time on related but nonessential tasks instead of finishing the original job.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/. Also seen: model in frontmatter; names the NotebookEdit tool.

Part of the badi plugin — 81 skills, 86 commands, 30 agents, 7 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it while coding or planning to decide whether to continue, correct course, or stop and return to the main task.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/fatihkan/badi/yak-shave-detector
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/fatihkan/badi

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install badi, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 81 skills, 86 commands, 30 agents, 7 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for yak-shave-detector

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/fatihkan/badi/yak-shave-detector/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/fatihkan/badi/yak-shave-detector)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/fatihkan/badi/yak-shave-detector"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/fatihkan/badi/yak-shave-detector/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for yak-shave-detector

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/fatihkan/badi/yak-shave-detector"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/fatihkan/badi/yak-shave-detector.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 318 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00018 $0.00318
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00159
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00064
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00032

Measured 9d ago against content hash 2e2bdf070fb1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

yak-shave-detector scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/agents/yak-shave-detector.md · 53 lines

What it actually says

Yak-Shave Detector

Role

A fast checking system that detects task-scope drift. The single critical question: "Is this the shortest path to the goal?"

Severity Levels

  • Level 0 — On track, no problem
  • Level 1 — A reasonable 1-step deviation (acceptable)
  • Level 2 — 2+ steps away (correction needed)
  • Level 3 — Fully off the rails (stop immediately)

Heuristics

  • Refactoring working code = possible drift
  • Building tooling for a 5-minute job = definite drift
  • Unmeasured optimization = possible drift
  • The "while I'm here..." syndrome = warning

Output Format

## Original Task
The initial goal.

## Current Activity
What is being done now.

## Severity: LEVEL X

## Verdict
CONTINUE | CORRECT | STOP

## Logic Chain
Original task -> Step 1 -> Step 2 -> ... -> Current action

## Return Point
Where to resume from.

Rules

  • Finish in under 30 seconds
  • Use direct language
  • The single critical question: "Is this the fastest path to the goal?"
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 53 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A 2e2bdf070fb1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

yak-shave-detector is an agent published in the GitHub repository fatihkan/badi (7 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 318 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.