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.
npx agentmods add commands/emaraschio/cursor-commands/instruction-ablationgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/emaraschio/cursor-commandsWrote 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/commands/emaraschio/cursor-commands/instruction-ablation)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/emaraschio/cursor-commands/instruction-ablation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/emaraschio/cursor-commands/instruction-ablation.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.00025 | $0.00930 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00013 | $0.00465 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00005 | $0.00186 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00093 |
Grade A, and why
instruction-ablation 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 50 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Overview
Run an ablation rebuild: confirm a bare baseline, execute one real task in-session under guardrails only, log what already works, and propose a new instruction only when the same failure repeats. Retest each proposal; keep it only if verification improves. Do not rewrite rules, skills, or memories until the user says apply now. Full workflow: .cursor/skill-contracts/instruction-ablation/SKILL.md (user install: ~/.cursor/skill-contracts/instruction-ablation/SKILL.md).
Defaults
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Mode | In-chat bare run |
| Intake | TASK, GUARDRAILS, EXIT CRITERIA, VERIFICATION required |
| Propose instruction | Only after repeated failure (same pattern ≥2 times) |
| Apply to disk | Never without explicit apply now and targets |
| Examples | Generic names only (service-a, task-1) |
Steps
- Read
.cursor/skill-contracts/instruction-ablation/SKILL.mdfor the full agent contract; if that file is missing, read~/.cursor/skill-contracts/instruction-ablation/SKILL.md. - Execute phases in order (Intake → Baseline gate → Bare run → Struggle log → Instruction proposals → Deliver).
- Report baseline status, bare-run outcome, struggle log, proposal ledger, minimal kept set, delete candidates (if stack provided), and halt; do not write rules/skills/memories without apply now.
Anti-patterns
- Four intake fields required. Trigger: starting ablation without complete intake. Wrong: inventing missing TASK / GUARDRAILS / EXIT CRITERIA / VERIFICATION or starting the bare run anyway. Correct: ask one focused question per gap. Reason: a bare run without clear exit and verification cannot judge keep/drop.
- No instruction after a one-off mistake. Trigger: a single failure during the bare run. Wrong: adding a new rule or skill clause immediately. Correct: log it as one-off unless the same failure pattern repeats (≥2). Reason: one-offs inflate the stack the skill exists to thin.
- Never claim a bare environment without confirmation. Trigger: starting the bare run. Wrong: stating hooks, memories, or rules were disabled when the user did not confirm. Correct: ask for clean-chat confirmation or declare contamination. Reason: fake bare baselines make ablation theater.
- Do not rewrite the stack without apply now. Trigger: finishing the minimal instruction set. Wrong: editing
rules, skills, or memories in the same turn. Correct: deliver the report and wait for apply now with targets. Reason: ablation recommends; the user owns the stack. - Keep/drop requires VERIFICATION. Trigger: deciding whether a proposed instruction stays. Wrong: keeping it because it "feels better" with no check against EXIT CRITERIA / VERIFICATION. Correct: retest and keep only if verification measurably improves. Reason: untested instructions recreate prompt bloat.
- Do not skip the bare baseline for a prompt rewrite. Trigger: user pastes an existing prompt and asks to improve it. Wrong: jumping into prompt-eval-debug-style edits without a bare run. Correct: run ablation from baseline, or route them to
prompt-eval-debugif they only want to edit a pasted prompt. Reason: different jobs; conflating them skips the evidence rebuild.
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.
- 5d ago First seen · 50 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A f69570f5b968
instruction-ablation is a command published in the GitHub repository emaraschio/cursor-commands (9 stars, last pushed 29d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 25 tokens to every session and 930 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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code-review
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security-audit
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fix-issue
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