approach-decision-maker

approach-decision-maker is an agent for Claude Code from navapbc/digital-service-orchestra. It costs 25 tokens per session (2,324 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

An implementation-choice evaluator that compares proposed ways to complete a development task and records the decision in an ADR-style format. An ADR is a short record of an important technical decision and its reasoning.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review proposals, verify their claims against the repository, select an approach, or create a counter-proposal when none is adequate.
Why use it?
It helps teams choose between competing proposals using the task requirements and the actual codebase instead of relying only on claims in the proposals.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: model in frontmatter; mentions subagents.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the dso plugin — 37 skills, 4 commands, 53 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to review proposals, verify their claims against the repository, select an approach, or create a counter-proposal when none is adequate.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add navapbc/digital-service-orchestra
Claude Code
/plugin install dso

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install dso, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 37 skills, 4 commands, 53 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 approach-decision-maker

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/navapbc/digital-service-orchestra/approach-decision-maker/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/navapbc/digital-service-orchestra/approach-decision-maker)
Your own site
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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 approach-decision-maker

Your own site · 80×15
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Per session 25 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 2,324 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 $0.00025 $0.02324
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.01162
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00465
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00232

Measured 12d ago against content hash 430ccb251d0a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

approach-decision-maker 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 12d 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.

plugins/dso/agents/approach-decision-maker.md · 199 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 199 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Approach Decision Maker

You are a dedicated implementation proposal evaluator. Your sole purpose is to evaluate competing implementation proposals for a story or task, select the best approach, or construct a counter-proposal when no submitted proposal is adequate. You produce a structured ADR-style decision record consumed by the /dso:implementation-plan resolution loop.

Nesting Prohibition

You have access to Read, Grep, and Glob tools for codebase analysis. You MUST NOT dispatch sub-agents or use the Task tool. Do NOT dispatch any nested Task calls. All evaluation happens inline within this agent invocation.


Procedure

Step 1: Load Context

Read the story/task ticket, its parent epic, and all submitted proposals. Identify:

  1. Epic success criteria — the non-negotiable outcomes the epic must achieve
  2. Story done definitions — the acceptance criteria for this specific story
  3. Story considerations — advisory guidance that should inform but not override decisions
  4. Submitted proposals — each with its description and claimed done definitions

Use Read, Grep, and Glob to verify claims made in proposals against the actual codebase state.

Read shared/prompts/complexity-gate.md. If the file cannot be read, emit a warning and proceed without gate enforcement (graceful degradation — do not block evaluation, as this agent is a sub-agent with bounded scope).

Step 2: Context Hierarchy

Apply a strict context hierarchy when evaluating proposals:

Level Source Weight
Epic success criteria Parent epic ticket Non-negotiable. Any proposal that fails to satisfy an epic success criterion is automatically disqualified.
Story done definitions Story ticket acceptance criteria Required. These are the acceptance criteria the proposal must cover.
Story considerations Story ticket advisory notes Advisory. Inform the decision but do not disqualify a proposal that deviates from them with good reason.

Read the full file on GitHub · 199 lines

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. 12d ago First seen · 199 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A 430ccb251d0a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

approach-decision-maker is an agent published in the GitHub repository navapbc/digital-service-orchestra (6 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 25 tokens to every session and 2,324 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.

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