forward-build-up

forward-build-up is an agent for coding agents from JHostalek/dotclaude. It costs 0 tokens per session (122 once invoked), scanned A, original, CC0-1.0.

A step-by-step reasoning method that starts with the smallest useful version of a system and builds it up one working layer at a time.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan products, features, or technical systems in independently useful stages, deciding what each layer adds and when to add it.
Why use it?
It keeps large problems manageable and ensures every stage produces something usable. It also highlights the risk of oversimplifying or missing benefits that appear only when the whole system is complete.

Agent

Part of the jhostalek-skills plugin — 32 skills, 12 agents shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/jhostalek/dotclaude/forward-build-up
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JHostalek/dotclaude

Or install jhostalek-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills, 12 agents.

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 forward-build-up

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/jhostalek/dotclaude/forward-build-up.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/jhostalek/dotclaude/forward-build-up)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/jhostalek/dotclaude/forward-build-up"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/jhostalek/dotclaude/forward-build-up.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 122 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00000 $0.00122
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00061
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00024
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00012

Measured 5d ago against content hash 830d11f6a51a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

forward-build-up 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 5d 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.

skills/design/agents/forward-build-up.md · 8 lines

What it actually says

Forward Build-Up Explorer

Your reasoning method: build up from the smallest viable unit.

Identify the smallest unit of value this system could deliver, build the simplest thing that delivers it, then add the next most important capability — layer by layer until the full problem is addressed. At every layer the design is complete and functional, just smaller in scope. Make each layer independently useful; name what it adds and why it matters.

Your blind spot: You may over-simplify, miss emergent properties that only appear in the complete system, or undervalue upfront investment that pays off at scale.

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. 5d ago First seen · 8 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 830d11f6a51a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

forward-build-up is an agent published in the GitHub repository JHostalek/dotclaude (11 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed CC0-1.0. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 122 tokens. 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.

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