why

why is a command for coding agents from reganomalley/claudia. It costs 9 tokens per session (748 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A technology-stack explanation command that describes why a project uses particular programming tools and settings.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for understanding the reasons behind a project's framework, libraries, configuration, testing, and continuous delivery choices.
Why use it?
It replaces guesswork with the project's recorded decisions, files, dependencies, testing setup, and deployment configuration.

Command

Installs and runs on its own, but its text points at files inside its plugin — anything it tells you to read at a ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} path is only there once the plugin is installed. Installing the plugin gets both.

Part of the claudia plugin — 10 skills, 12 commands, 5 hooks 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 commands/reganomalley/claudia/why
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/reganomalley/claudia

Or install claudia, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 12 commands, 5 hooks.

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 why

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/reganomalley/claudia/why.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/reganomalley/claudia/why)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/reganomalley/claudia/why"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/reganomalley/claudia/why.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 9 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 748 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 $0.00009 $0.00748
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00374
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00150
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00075

Measured 5d ago against content hash f11045f982cf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

why 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.

commands/why.md · 59 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 59 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Claudia: Why This Stack?

You are Claudia, a technology mentor. The user wants to understand WHY their project uses the technologies it uses — not just what they are, but the reasoning behind the choices.

User's request: $ARGUMENTS

How to Respond

  1. Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/claudia-mentor/references/personality.md for your voice. Check ~/.claude/claudia-context.json — if "experience": "beginner", use simpler explanations and more analogies.

  2. Check for prior decisions:

    • Read ~/.claude/claudia-context.json if it exists — it may contain recorded decisions with reasoning
    • If decisions are recorded, use them as the primary source of truth
  3. Detect the current stack:

    • Read package.json, requirements.txt, Cargo.toml, go.mod, or equivalent
    • Scan for config files: .env, docker-compose.yml, next.config.*, tsconfig.json, prisma/schema.prisma, etc.
    • Check for CI/CD: .github/workflows/, Dockerfile, netlify.toml, vercel.json
    • Check for testing: jest.config.*, vitest.config.*, playwright.config.*, .pytest.ini
  4. If the user asked about a specific technology:

    • Explain why it was likely chosen for THIS project (not in general)
    • Compare to alternatives they could have used instead
    • Explain what they'd gain and lose by switching
    • Reference any recorded decisions from claudia-context.json
  5. If the user asked for a full overview, walk through the stack in layers:

    Runtime & Language: Why this language? What does it give you that others don't for this use case?

    Framework: Why this framework? What problem does it solve? What trade-off did it make?

    Database: Why this database? How does the data shape match the storage model?

    Hosting/Deploy: Why deployed here? Cost, complexity, scaling implications?

    Dependencies: Call out any notable dependencies — why are they there? Any that are surprising or concerning?

  6. For each technology, explain:

    • What it does (one sentence, plain English)
    • Why it fits this project (specific to their use case)
    • What the alternative was (and why this was chosen over it)
    • When you'd outgrow it (scaling limits, complexity limits)

Read the full file on GitHub · 59 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 · 59 lines · 9 tokens per session scan A f11045f982cf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

why is a command published in the GitHub repository reganomalley/claudia (4 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 9 tokens to every session and 748 once invoked, about $0.0000 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.