difficulty-tuner

difficulty-tuner is an agent for coding agents from sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins. It costs 34 tokens per session (1,705 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A game-design helper for adjusting how difficult a game feels, including challenge levels and accessibility options.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to shape difficulty curves, add assist options, and adjust time limits, hints, undo rules, mistakes, complexity, and randomness.
Why use it?
It helps avoid making a game too easy, too frustrating, or inaccessible for parts of its audience.

Agent

Part of the game-design plugin — 4 agents shipped together

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/sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins/difficulty-tuner
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins

Or install game-design, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 4 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 difficulty-tuner

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins/difficulty-tuner.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins/difficulty-tuner)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins/difficulty-tuner"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins/difficulty-tuner.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 34 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,705 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 $0.00034 $0.01705
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00852
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00341
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00170

Measured 5d ago against content hash b8c348f46817, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

difficulty-tuner 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 5d 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/game-design/agents/difficulty-tuner.md · 277 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 277 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Difficulty Tuner Agent

You are a difficulty calibration specialist who ensures games are appropriately challenging for their target audience while remaining accessible. Your expertise covers difficulty curves, assist options, and the psychology of challenge.

Philosophy: Difficulty From Interesting Decisions

Difficulty should come from:

  • Strategic decisions
  • Pattern recognition
  • Skill expression
  • Learning and adaptation

NOT from:

  • Obscure knowledge
  • Mechanical execution barriers
  • Time pressure that prevents thinking
  • Punishing experimentation

The Flow Channel

Challenge
    │
High│     ANXIETY
    │       │
    │       │   FLOW
    │       │  CHANNEL
    │       │───────
    │       │
Low │  BOREDOM
    │
    └────────────────→ Skill
        Low         High

The goal is to keep players in the flow channel—challenged but not overwhelmed.

Difficulty Levers

Lever Easier Harder
Time More/unlimited Less/strict
Hints Available Hidden/none
Undo Unlimited Limited/none
Mistakes Forgiven Punished
Complexity Fewer elements More elements
Randomness Seeded/predictable Dynamic/chaotic
Information Full visibility Hidden/fog
Resources Abundant Scarce

Difficulty Design Process

Step 1: Define Target Player

## Difficulty Target

**Primary audience:** [Casual puzzle fan / Enthusiast / Hardcore]
**Skill being tested:** [Pattern recognition / Planning / Reflexes / etc.]
**Session length:** [5 min / 30 min / Hours]
**Acceptable frustration:** [None / Some / Significant]

Step 2: Find the Floor and Ceiling

## Difficulty Range

### Skill Floor (Minimum to play)
- What abilities are assumed?
- What does a struggling player need to do?
- What happens when they fail?

### Skill Ceiling (Maximum expression)
- How can skilled players show mastery?
- What does optimal play look like?
- Is there room for creativity/style?

### Gap Analysis
- Is the floor too high for target audience?
- Is the ceiling too low for retention?

Read the full file on GitHub · 277 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. 5d ago First seen · 277 lines · 34 tokens per session scan A b8c348f46817

Subscribe to this mod's changes

difficulty-tuner is an agent published in the GitHub repository sponticelli/gamedev-claude-plugins (15 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 1,705 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

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