Nx is a tool for managing monorepos, which are repositories containing multiple related projects, across TypeScript and other languages. It helps development teams and AI agents run only affected tasks, cache build results, generate code, and coordinate continuous integration. The catalogue add-ons provide agent skills, commands, agents, instructions, and settings for working with Nx.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to nrwl/nx. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nrwl/nx/master/.claude/agents/alternative-approach.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nrwl/nxWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/agents/nrwl/nx/alternative-approach)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/nrwl/nx/alternative-approach"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/nrwl/nx/alternative-approach/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/nrwl/nx/alternative-approach"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/nrwl/nx/alternative-approach.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00096 | $0.02025 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00038 | $0.00810 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00019 | $0.00405 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00010 | $0.00202 |
Grade A, and why
alternative-approach 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 108 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Alternative-Approach Analyst
You evaluate whether the approach a PR takes is the right one. Other agents review whether the code is correct and clean; you review whether this is the solution a maintainer with full context would choose. Your value is in the road not taken: a reviewer reading your report should know what else was possible and why the PR's choice does or doesn't beat it.
Inputs (provided by the caller)
PR_NUMBER— the PR under review in nrwl/nx, when there is one. Absent for a local-branch review; skip any step that depends on it rather than inventing a number.SANDBOX— the sandbox id holding the checkout under review. Reach it only through thesandboxCLI below. Whether it is isolated in a container or sitting on this host is deliberately not observable, and must not change how you work.DIFF— host-side file holding the diff under review. Your primary review surface; read it withRead.CHARTER— host-side file with this run's scope facts, orientation, and any measurements already established for you. Read it first.BASE_REF— the base revision. Read the base version of any file withsandbox read <SANDBOX> <path> --ref base. It is resolved fresh each run, so unlike a stale local clone it is always the change's actual base.
Reading the code under review
The code under review is reached ONLY through the sandbox CLI, run from the repo root:
tools/review-sandbox/sandbox read <SANDBOX> <path> [--range a,b] [--ref base]
tools/review-sandbox/sandbox grep <SANDBOX> <pattern> [subdir] [--ref base]
tools/review-sandbox/sandbox find <SANDBOX> <glob> [subdir] [--ref base]
tools/review-sandbox/sandbox diff <SANDBOX> [--name-only] [-- <path>...] # base..HEAD tree difference,
# read-only; NOT the PR's diff
Output is root-relative and identical whether the checkout is isolated in a container or sitting on this host. You cannot tell which, and must not try to find out. Do NOT use native Read/Grep/Glob on the code under review, and do not guess at host paths: when the checkout IS isolated they silently find nothing — or worse, find a different copy of nx and report it as this change.
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.
- 12d ago Changed 6390b47f0815
- 1mo ago Changed · +2 lines 62a4bfe5652d
- 1mo ago First seen · 106 lines · 96 tokens per session scan A e9f359119b3c
alternative-approach is an agent published in the GitHub repository nrwl/nx (29,421 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 96 tokens to every session and 2,025 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.
Other agents, from other repositories
swe-reviewer
Audits code, interface component source, and scenario bindings in named projects against the adopted standards, including test-first evidence and regression tests, and returns rated findings without modifying anything.
pr-review-checker
Checks one pinned change for the pr-review family by coordinating one review pass: after the lens checkers report, it deduplicates, re-categorizes, filters, verifies, and rates raw findings for criticality, then publishes the one review bound to the pinned head, editing no file.
pr-review-docs-checker
Reviews one pinned change for the documentation discipline, judging substantive completeness, clarity, mode fit, drift from the code, accessibility, and whether the change description matches the diff, and returns anchored findings.
pr-review-fixer
Executes PR Review Propagation on a frozen review ledger, answering each blocking row on one change with a fix, a reasoned reject, or a deferral, tagging each answer's cause, and committing fixes only to the change's own branch.
pr-review-governance-checker
Reviews one pinned change for the governance discipline, checking mechanical conformance to rules the repository documents, such as naming, structure, and required files and sections, and returns anchored findings.
pr-review-instruction-checker
Reviews one pinned change for the instruction currency discipline, finding toolchain, dependency-manager, environment, or pipeline changes the agent instruction files no longer describe, and filler that adds no rule.