fable-workflow

A working method for coding, design, and research tasks that first identifies unclear decisions before building.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for clarifying specifications, asking targeted questions, comparing possible approaches, recording assumptions, verifying changes, and keeping the human involved.
Why use it?
It reduces errors caused by silently guessing about vague requirements or unfamiliar code, and requires checking whether the result actually works.

Cursor rule

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 rules/joey114132/fable-workflow-skill/fable-workflow
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/joey114132/fable-workflow-skill
Per session 49 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 430 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 $0.00049 $0.00430
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00215
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00086
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00043

Measured 2d ago against content hash 20f9ccde399b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

fable-workflow 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 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.

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.

integrations/cursor/fable-workflow.mdc · 29 lines

What it actually says

Fable Workflow

The map is not the territory. The spec/prompt is the map; the real codebase and constraints are the territory. Wherever they diverge is an unknown — an unspecified decision. Don't guess it silently. Surface it first, then build. (Skip this for trivial one-line changes.)

The loop

  1. Unhobble — use tools, not memory. Counting / enumeration / precise lookup → write a script.
  2. Find the unknowns before building:
    • Blind-spot pass — "list my unknown-unknowns and the gotchas in this module/domain."
    • Interview me — ask questions, prioritising ones that would change the architecture.
    • Variants — for taste calls (design/format/API), offer N genuinely different options.
    • References as maps — prefer an example/mockup over a written spec.
  3. Build, logging deviations — keep a running ASSUMPTIONS / NOTES list of every unknown hit.
  4. Verify — make it real — exercise the result (run it / smallest check); a good plan isn't a correct answer. On failure, loop attempt→verify→diagnose with a max-tries cap; stop/surface if the signal stalls.
  5. Stay in the loop — quiz the human before merge.

Rules

  • Vague spec / unfamiliar territory → find unknowns before implementing; don't build one interpretation silently.
  • Enumeration / counting / precise lookup → script it, don't recall.
  • Taste / subjective call → offer variants.
  • Can't ask (autonomous)? Write an UNKNOWNS list, pick a default per item with a one-line reason, log them, then proceed.
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 · 29 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 20f9ccde399b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

fable-workflow is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository joey114132/fable-workflow-skill (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 430 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 2026-08-31.