optimization-methods

optimization-methods is a skill for Claude Code from Abhinavbwj/Claude-skills-for-Computational-Designers. It costs 33 tokens per session (10,711 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to mathematical and evolutionary methods for improving architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) designs. These methods search through possible choices to find solutions that best meet goals such as lower weight, better daylight, or stronger performance.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for layout, structural, facade, material, routing, and other design problems involving objectives, constraints, topology, shape, or size.
Why use it?
It helps compare many design alternatives using measurable goals and limits instead of relying only on manual trial and error. It explains methods such as genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, particle swarms, and gradient-based search.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter.

Part of the Claude-skills-for-Computational-Designers plugin — 18 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it for layout, structural, facade, material, routing, and other design problems involving objectives, constraints, topology, shape, or size.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/abhinavbwj/claude-skills-for-computational-designers/optimization-methods
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.

Any agent
npx skills add Abhinavbwj/Claude-skills-for-Computational-Designers --skill optimization-methods
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Abhinavbwj/Claude-skills-for-Computational-Designers

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install Claude-skills-for-Computational-Designers, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 18 skills.

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 optimization-methods

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abhinavbwj/claude-skills-for-computational-designers/optimization-methods/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/abhinavbwj/claude-skills-for-computational-designers/optimization-methods)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/abhinavbwj/claude-skills-for-computational-designers/optimization-methods"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abhinavbwj/claude-skills-for-computational-designers/optimization-methods/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for optimization-methods

Your own site · 80×15
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Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 10,711 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00033 $0.10711
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.05355
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.02142
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.01071

Measured 11d ago against content hash 03456b457349, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

optimization-methods 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 11d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/optimization-methods/SKILL.md · 783 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 783 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Optimization Methods for AEC Computational Design

1. Optimization in AEC Design

The Role of Optimization

Optimization is the systematic process of finding the best solution from a set of feasible alternatives according to one or more criteria. In the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, optimization transforms design from an intuition-driven craft into a rigorous, evidence-based discipline that can explore thousands of alternatives in the time a human designer evaluates a handful.

Every AEC project embeds optimization problems whether practitioners recognize them or not. Selecting a column grid that minimizes steel tonnage, arranging rooms to maximize adjacency satisfaction, routing ductwork to minimize pressure loss, or shaping a facade to balance daylight and solar heat gain -- all are optimization problems with design variables, objectives, and constraints.

Design Optimization vs. Mathematical Optimization

Mathematical optimization seeks a global or local extremum of a function subject to constraints, governed by theorems about convexity, differentiability, and feasibility. Design optimization in AEC adds layers of complexity:

  • Multiple stakeholders with conflicting objectives (cost vs. aesthetics vs. performance)
  • Mixed variable types: continuous (member thickness), discrete (bolt count), categorical (material grade), topological (connectivity)
  • Expensive evaluations: a single FEA run may take minutes; a CFD simulation hours; an energy model tens of minutes
  • Ill-defined objectives: "architectural quality" resists quantification
  • Regulatory constraints: building codes, zoning ordinances, fire safety -- hard constraints that cannot be relaxed
  • Manufacturing constraints: available section catalogs, sheet sizes, fabrication tolerances
  • Uncertainty: loads are probabilistic, material properties vary, construction tolerances exist

Problem Classification

Classification Axis Categories AEC Examples
Variable type Continuous, discrete, integer, mixed, combinatorial Member sizing (continuous), bolt count (integer), material choice (categorical)
Objective count Single-objective, multi-objective, many-objective (>3) Weight minimization (single), weight vs. cost vs. carbon (many)
Constraint type Unconstrained, equality-constrained, inequality-constrained, bound-constrained Stress <= allowable, drift <= H/400, area = target
Landscape Convex, non-convex, multi-modal, discontinuous, noisy Topology optimization (non-convex), layout optimization (multi-modal)
Evaluation cost Cheap (analytical), moderate (FEA), expensive (CFD), very expensive (coupled multi-physics) Truss weight (cheap), building energy (expensive)
Determinism Deterministic, stochastic, robust, reliability-based Deterministic sizing, reliability-based design under seismic uncertainty

Read the full file on GitHub · 783 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 11d ago First seen · 783 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A 03456b457349

Subscribe to this mod's changes

optimization-methods is a skill published in the GitHub repository Abhinavbwj/Claude-skills-for-Computational-Designers (212 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 10,711 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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