subsystem-walkthrough

subsystem-walkthrough is a skill for Claude Code from afaraha8403/balakit. It costs 76 tokens per session (602 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A procedure for explaining how a software subsystem works, including its architecture, runtime flow, ownership, and layers. A subsystem is one part of a larger application with a related responsibility.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to answer how a subsystem works, decide where new code belongs, or build a mental model before implementation.
Why use it?
It gives a developer an onboarding explanation before they change unfamiliar code, rather than a list of isolated source-code notes.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions subagents; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Good fit Use it to answer how a subsystem works, decide where new code belongs, or build a mental model before implementation.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/afaraha8403/balakit/subsystem-walkthrough
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 afaraha8403/balakit --skill subsystem-walkthrough
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/afaraha8403/balakit

Made for: Claude Code.

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 subsystem-walkthrough

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/afaraha8403/balakit/subsystem-walkthrough/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/afaraha8403/balakit/subsystem-walkthrough)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/afaraha8403/balakit/subsystem-walkthrough"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/afaraha8403/balakit/subsystem-walkthrough/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 subsystem-walkthrough

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/afaraha8403/balakit/subsystem-walkthrough"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/afaraha8403/balakit/subsystem-walkthrough.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 76 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 602 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 $0.00076 $0.00602
Opus 5 $0.00038 $0.00301
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00120
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00060

Measured yesterday against content hash 88223ca3cea6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

subsystem-walkthrough 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.

.agents/skills/subsystem-walkthrough/SKILL.md · 65 lines

What it actually says

Subsystem walkthrough

Leading words: mental model, one explainer, parallel slices, inherit host model.

Answer "how does X work?" at the level of a senior engineer onboarding onto the subsystem. Not annotated source.

Copy these steps into the todo list verbatim. Skip with skip: <reason>.

  1. Assess complexity. Simple → one explainer. Complex → 2–4 read-only explorers, then one synthesizer. Write Complexity: simple or Complexity: complex (N slices) as the first line of the output.
  2. Explore or explain (see below). Inherit the host model. Do not hardcode a slug.
  3. Present the explainer output with light edits only. Keep the Complexity line.

When in doubt, take the simple path.

Simple

One read-only subagent explores and explains in a single pass. Fill references/explainer-prompt.md without explorer findings.

Complex

Decompose into 2–4 distinct slices. Spawn explorers in one message, each with references/explorer-prompt.md. Then one synthesizer with the explainer template and every explorer's findings filled in. If the host cannot spawn subagents, run the slices sequentially yourself.

Output

First line: Complexity: simple or Complexity: complex (N slices).

Then: Overview / Key Concepts / How It Works / Where Things Live / Placement / Gotchas. Drop a section that does not apply. Placement is where new code for this subsystem should live (package, file, layer) — one short paragraph, not a second architecture essay.

Reply contract

The Complexity line, then the explanation. Do not rewrite it into a different structure after the explainer returns.

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. yesterday First seen · 65 lines · 76 tokens per session scan A 88223ca3cea6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

subsystem-walkthrough is a skill published in the GitHub repository afaraha8403/balakit (1 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 76 tokens to every session and 602 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-09-11.