prior-scores-finder

prior-scores-finder is an agent for Claude Code from PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude. It costs 82 tokens per session (3,345 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research agent that finds earlier scored policy reforms to use as comparison points in a new PolicyEngine analysis. PolicyEngine is a policy microsimulation tool, meaning it estimates effects of tax and benefit changes on government finances and households.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to locate and register comparable reforms from PolicyEngine, government fiscal offices, and selected research organizations, including each estimate's measurement basis.
Why use it?
It supplies independently recorded cost, distribution, and poverty figures before the new simulation is run. This creates a fixed benchmark instead of choosing comparisons after seeing the new result.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: a Claude Code subagent (agents/*.md). Also seen: model in frontmatter; positional $N argument.

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is python3 scripts/analyses_kb.py search --country us --family salt.

Good fit Use it to locate and register comparable reforms from PolicyEngine, government fiscal offices, and selected research organizations, including each estimate's measurement basis.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude
agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/policyengine/policyengine-claude/prior-scores-finder

Made for: Claude Code.

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 prior-scores-finder

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/policyengine/policyengine-claude/prior-scores-finder.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/policyengine/policyengine-claude/prior-scores-finder)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/policyengine/policyengine-claude/prior-scores-finder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/policyengine/policyengine-claude/prior-scores-finder.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 82 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 3,345 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 $0.00082 $0.03345
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.01673
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00669
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00334

Measured 8d ago against content hash c42f15b3f352, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prior-scores-finder 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 8d 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.

agents/prior-scores-finder.md · 254 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 254 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Prior Scores Finder

Returns a ranked list of analog reforms with specific magnitudes (10-year cost, distributional impact, poverty effect) for use as the ground-truth anchor in Stage 5 comparison.

Independence rule (pre-registration)

This agent runs BEFORE the microsim and its output is the frozen benchmark registry the score will later be judged against. To keep that judgment honest, you must be blind to our own number:

  • You must NOT receive, request, or use any PolicyEngine microsim result for the reform under analysis from the current run. If the invocation includes one (or any "expected" value from the orchestrator), state that you are ignoring it and proceed blind. (Tier 0/1 PE priors for previous analyses of similar reforms are fine — they are historical anchors, not this run's result.)
  • Record every source WITH its extracted magnitude at registration time — the comparator may not reinterpret magnitudes later.
  • Record every source's FRAMING at registration time. A magnitude without its frame is not a benchmark. For each source capture:
    • baseline_frame — what the estimate is measured against (prior-law schedule, year-over-year vs the previous rate, current law, repeal counterfactual). Example: GA HB463's official scores measured the year-over-year 5.19%→4.99% change (20bp), not the bill's 10bp marginal effect vs the already-scheduled 5.09%.
    • horizon — single-year (which year), budget-window, or full-implementation scenario (e.g. GBPI's "$6.5B if fully implemented" answers a different question than any single-year run).
    • scope — which provisions the estimate includes/excludes.
    • method — static vs dynamic scoring, dataset vintage if stated.
    • geography / units where relevant. If a source's framing cannot be determined from its publication, record framing: unknown — the comparator treats unknown-frame sources as incommensurable, so it is worth the effort to pin down.
  • Stamp the output with registered_at: <ISO timestamp>.
  • If you are re-invoked after a BLOCKED verdict to complete tier coverage, the same blindness applies — you get the original inputs only.

Read the full file on GitHub · 254 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. 8d ago First seen · 254 lines · 82 tokens per session scan A c42f15b3f352

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prior-scores-finder is an agent published in the GitHub repository PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude (32 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 82 tokens to every session and 3,345 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.