assess-moat-sources

assess-moat-sources is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Agent-Engineer-Master/skill-engineer. It costs 222 tokens per session (2,197 once invoked), scanned C, original, MIT.

A strategy analysis of Helmer's seven powers, a framework for judging why companies in an industry stay ahead of competitors.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to assess an industry's incumbent defenses, how long they may last, whether a new entrant can build them, and what combination a winner needs.
Why use it?
It separates durable competitive advantages from ordinary good execution and tests whether each advantage has a financial benefit and a barrier to copying it.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

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 skills/agent-engineer-master/skill-engineer/assess-moat-sources
Any agent
npx skills add Agent-Engineer-Master/skill-engineer --skill assess-moat-sources
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Agent-Engineer-Master/skill-engineer

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 assess-moat-sources

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/agent-engineer-master/skill-engineer/assess-moat-sources.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/agent-engineer-master/skill-engineer/assess-moat-sources)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/agent-engineer-master/skill-engineer/assess-moat-sources"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/agent-engineer-master/skill-engineer/assess-moat-sources.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 222 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,197 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. 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 5.1 $0.00222 $0.02197
Opus 5 $0.00111 $0.01099
Sonnet 5 $0.00044 $0.00439
Haiku 4.5 $0.00022 $0.00220

Measured 6d ago against content hash 7cc5fe602aaf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

assess-moat-sources scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 6d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/validate_moat.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Hidden instructionshighPrompt injection

Directives inside HTML comments, invisible characters or bidirectional overrides are read by the model and not by the person reviewing the file.

<!-- Built with Agent Engineer Master — get your own production-ready skill: www.agentengineermaster.com/skill-engineer -->
strategy/industry-analysis/assess-moat-sources/SKILL.md · 108 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 108 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Assess Moat Sources

For a defined industry, assess which of Helmer's 7 Powers protect incumbents (and which can be built by a new entrant), how durable each is, and what Power combination the winning archetype must hold. Output: moat-sources.md with per-Power assessment + durability + buildability + winner-archetype profile.

The discipline: moat is not a vibe. Helmer's 7 Powers is the canonical taxonomy: each Power requires a benefit (cash-flow improvement via higher price, lower cost, or reduced investment) AND a barrier (an obstacle that prevents competitors from arbitraging the benefit away). Without both, it is not a Power — it is operational excellence, branding aspiration, or wishful thinking.

Iron rules:

  • All 7 Powers explicitly assessed (present / absent / nascent) — none silently omitted.
  • For each present Power: explicit benefit: statement + barrier: statement. Both required.
  • Durability rating per present Power: erosion timeframe (short <3y / medium 3-7y / long >7y) with named erosion vector.
  • Buildability for new-entrant / roll-up archetype: per Power, can a well-resourced entrant build it within horizon? Conditions required?
  • Winner-archetype Power profile: name the minimum Power combination an industry winner must hold.
  • Power Progression alignment: cross-reference industry/company stage (per analyze-trajectory if present) — origination vs takeoff vs stability Powers.
  • Cross-reference reconciliation: if working/value-chain-profit-pools.md exists, the structural protection named there MUST match this skill's dominant Power. Mismatch flagged explicitly for Gate 2.
  • V/C/A/I tagging on every fact-claim per ../_shared/provenance-tagging.md.
  • 2026 vocabulary per ../_shared/2026-terminology.md — "strategic power" not "moat" in body prose; "moat" only in shorthand.
  • Append next_skills: YAML at end of output.

Process

1. Intake

Confirm: industry slug, analysis horizon (5y / 10y default), whether a roll-up / new-entrant archetype is in scope. Read references/seven-powers-canonical.md for the verified Helmer definitions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 108 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. 6d ago First seen · 108 lines · 222 tokens per session scan C 7cc5fe602aaf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

assess-moat-sources is a skill published in the GitHub repository Agent-Engineer-Master/skill-engineer (8 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 222 tokens to every session and 2,197 once invoked, about $0.0011 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (hidden instructions). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.