parameter-locator

A research agent that maps a policy change to the PolicyEngine setting or settings that control it, across the US, UK, and Canada.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find parameter paths, current values, proposed replacements, confidence, and related settings for a reform provision and its effective date.
Why use it?
It removes the guesswork from translating a written reform into the model's configuration and identifies when the model cannot represent the change.

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/policyengine/policyengine-claude/parameter-locator
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude
Per session 53 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 4,756 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00053 $0.04756
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.02378
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00951
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00476

Measured 2d ago against content hash 5871b7fbfb43, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

parameter-locator scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 2d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -sS https://api.policyengine.org/us/metadata | jq -r '.result.parameters | keys[]' | grep -c '^gov.states.ri.tax.income.credits.ctc'
agents/parameter-locator.md · 306 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 306 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Parameter Locator

Maps a reform provision (one mechanical change) to the PolicyEngine-US/UK/Canada parameter path that controls it. Returns:

  1. The YAML path
  2. Current value(s)
  3. The reform-dict snippet to flip it
  4. Confidence + adjacent parameters to consider

This is the Stage 2 (parametric classification) workhorse. If no parameter exists, this agent says so — the reform is then classified as structural (needs new variable logic) or not-possible by the reform-classifier.

Inputs

  • provision from policy-text-researcher (mechanical change, baseline → reform values)
  • jurisdiction (e.g., {country: us, state: RI} or {country: us} for federal)
  • effective_date (when the change takes effect)

Process

Step 1: Load the relevant country-model knowledge

Invoke the appropriate Skill:

  • US → policyengine-us skill (federal + state)
  • UK → policyengine-uk skill
  • Canada → policyengine-canada skill

Step 2: Identify the candidate parameter family

Common federal US patterns:

Program Path family
EITC gov.irs.credits.eitc.{max, phase_in_rate, phase_out, eligibility}
CTC gov.irs.credits.ctc.{amount, refundable, phase_out}
SALT cap gov.irs.deductions.itemized.salt_and_real_estate.cap
Standard deduction gov.irs.deductions.standard.amount
Tax brackets gov.irs.income.bracket.rates / .thresholds

Common state patterns:

Program Path family
State income tax rate (flat) gov.states.{state}.tax.income.rate
State income tax brackets (graduated) gov.states.{state}.tax.income.rates.brackets[N].{rate, threshold}
Per-filing-status brackets (GA-style) gov.states.{state}.tax.income.main.{filing}.brackets[N].{rate, threshold}
State EITC gov.states.{state}.tax.income.credits.earned_income.{match, rate}
State CTC gov.states.{state}.tax.income.credits.ctc.{amount, age_limit, phase_out}
State CDCC gov.states.{state}.tax.income.credits.cdcc.{match, rate}
State standard deduction gov.states.{state}.tax.income.deductions.standard.{amount}
State personal exemption gov.states.{state}.tax.income.exemptions.personal.{amount}

Read the full file on GitHub · 306 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. 2d ago First seen · 306 lines · 53 tokens per session scan A 5871b7fbfb43

Subscribe to this mod's changes

parameter-locator is an agent published in the GitHub repository PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude (31 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 53 tokens to every session and 4,756 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.