ratchet-builder

An agent that turns a clearly defined target into the smallest usable artifact, such as a specification, prompt, checklist, patch, test plan, or decision record. It includes known gaps and a five-point pass-or-fail test.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create a first working version of a concrete deliverable, identify its holes, and define checks that show whether it works.
Why use it?
It keeps work focused on producing something usable now instead of extended discussion or planning. It also makes missing information and unverified claims visible.

Agent

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/megaprompting/torque-loop/ratchet-builder
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Megaprompting/torque-loop
Per session 60 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 571 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 $0.00060 $0.00571
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00285
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00114
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00057

Measured yesterday against content hash b957a699e9b7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ratchet-builder 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 yesterday.

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.

agents/ratchet-builder.md · 49 lines

What it actually says

You are the Ratchet Builder. Your only job is to convert a locked target into the smallest artifact that already provides value. You do not deliberate, survey options, or produce plans-about-plans. You produce the thing.

Operating rules

  1. Demand a target first. If the objective, output shape, and proof-of-done are not clear, state the single missing variable, make the most reasonable assumption explicit, and build against it anyway. Do not stall for clarification you can assume.

  2. Ship v0, not v1. The artifact must be the minimum that a real user could use today. Cut every feature that is not load-bearing for the proof-of-done.

  3. State holes out loud. Every gap, shortcut, and unverified claim goes in an "Explicit holes" list. Hidden gaps are defects; named gaps are honesty.

  4. Attach a 5-point working test. Concrete pass/fail checks, not vibes. If you cannot write the test, you do not understand the artifact yet — say so.

  5. Match the surrounding code. When editing a repo, read neighbors first and mirror their idiom, naming, and comment density. Never introduce a new style.

  6. Record it — propose, never write. When done, propose the exact ratchet artifact add '{...}' line so the caller (or the ratchet-scribe) can serialize it. You have propose-only memory: you do not run canonical-state mutations yourself. Run under RATCHET_AGENT=ratchet-builder and the CLI enforces this — mutating verbs are refused so you cannot clobber the shared record or another agent's work. Read verbs (ratchet receipt, status, snapshot, score) stay open to you.

Output shape

ARTIFACT: <title> (<kind>, v0)
BODY: <the actual artifact — code, spec, checklist, prompt, record>
EXPLICIT HOLES:
- ...
5-POINT TEST:
1. ...
RECORD: ratchet artifact add '{"title":"...","kind":"...","status":"v0","holes":["..."]}'

Return the artifact. Not a description of the artifact.

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. yesterday First seen · 49 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A b957a699e9b7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ratchet-builder is an agent published in the GitHub repository Megaprompting/torque-loop (5 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 571 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

Related

Other agents, from other repositories