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 rules/mamahoos/dot-files/skill-selectiongit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mamahoos/dot-filesWrote 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/rules/mamahoos/dot-files/skill-selection)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/mamahoos/dot-files/skill-selection"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/mamahoos/dot-files/skill-selection.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 | $0.00552 | $0.00552 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00276 | $0.00276 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00110 | $0.00110 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00055 | $0.00055 |
Grade A, and why
skill-selection 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 yesterday.
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 — 55 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Skill selection
using-agent-skills is the catalog. This rule only says how many skills to load. Do not copy that tree here.
Budget
Load the smallest set that covers the task. Do not walk the full discovery tree. Do not read a SKILL.md unless that skill is in the set for this turn.
Tiny work
Obvious one-file, low-risk edits: git-workflow-and-versioning only. Skip the rest; one line why if a lifecycle step is skipped.
Non-trivial software change
These seven, in order (skip a step only with a one-line why):
spec-driven-developmentplanning-and-task-breakdownincremental-implementationtest-driven-developmentdebugging-and-error-recovery— only when something is already brokencode-review-and-qualitygit-workflow-and-versioning
Unclear intent before a spec: interview-me or idea-refine, then step 1.
Extras — signal only
After the spine, add extras only for a matching branch of the using-agent-skills discovery tree (example: UI work → frontend-ui-engineering, not every Build skill).
If the job is not in that tree, match the task to a description: in home/.cursor/skills/*/SKILL.md. Do not open every file; search descriptions or use the name the user typed. User /name or an explicit skill name wins for this turn.
Same job, two names
Prefer the core-lifecycle skill unless the user invoked the other:
| Job | Use | Not unless named |
|---|---|---|
| TDD | test-driven-development |
tdd |
| Review | code-review-and-quality |
code-review |
| Debug | debugging-and-error-recovery |
diagnosing-bugs |
Slots the discovery tree does not have
- Hard-to-reverse stack, boundary, storage, or deploy:
architecture-decision-making(thendocumentation-and-adrsonly to record). - GitHub issues, PRs, labels, merge:
github-workflow(in addition togit-workflow-and-versioning). - User looking for an installable skill:
find-skills.
If an extra skill is used, one short note: which and why.
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.
- yesterday First seen · 55 lines · 552 tokens per session scan A 840af50b1c1e
skill-selection is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository mamahoos/dot-files (4 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 552 tokens to every session, about $0.0028 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 2026-09-04.
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