goal-lock

goal-lock is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from AlexZio00/sovereign-skills. It costs 49 tokens per session (7,906 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A task-control process that defines the goal and expected evidence, then guides an agent through planning, execution, checking, finalising, and reporting. It includes a shorter mode for small, clear changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for coding tasks that need a fixed goal, explicit completion criteria, scope control, and verification of the finished work.
Why use it?
It reduces scope drift and makes the agent check whether the claimed result was actually achieved. It can stop when the request or success conditions are missing or contradictory.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: user-invocable in frontmatter, but also agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Part of the goal-lock plugin — 1 skill shipped together

Good fit Use it for coding tasks that need a fixed goal, explicit completion criteria, scope control, and verification of the finished work.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alexzio00/sovereign-skills/goal-lock
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 AlexZio00/sovereign-skills --skill goal-lock
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlexZio00/sovereign-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install goal-lock, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill.

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 goal-lock

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alexzio00/sovereign-skills/goal-lock/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alexzio00/sovereign-skills/goal-lock)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alexzio00/sovereign-skills/goal-lock"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alexzio00/sovereign-skills/goal-lock/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 goal-lock

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alexzio00/sovereign-skills/goal-lock"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alexzio00/sovereign-skills/goal-lock.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 7,906 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 9 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Excessive Agency · line 538
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 166
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 339
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 340
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 353
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 475
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 494
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 515
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
  • medium Memory Poisoning · line 606
    Skill attempts to fill the context window with filler content, displacing legitimate instructions and safety constraints. This can degrade agent performance or bypass safety boundaries.
    Fix: Implement context-window management that detects and rejects padding or stuffing attempts. Prioritize system instructions over user-injected content.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00049 $0.07906
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.03953
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.01581
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00791

Measured 5d ago against content hash 4b2220a17ba7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

goal-lock scanned grade A 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 5d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

e.g.: `curl localhost:3000/api/health` → 200 OK
goal-lock/SKILL.md · 641 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 641 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/goal-lock — Agent Discipline Engine v1.0

Lock the goal. Run the loop. Ship clean.

Prevents agents from drifting off target, masquerading success, or creeping scope. Quality through enforced loops, not prompt obedience.

Dominant Variable

Is DONE EVIDENCE verified by actual execution? — What the agent says is done vs what is actually done. Closing this gap to zero is the purpose of this skill.

Trigger

  • /goal-lock
  • /goal-lock quick (Quick mode)
  • "goal lock"
  • "task harness"

Discard If

  • Simple question/conversation (no code changes)
  • goal-lock already active in this session
  • Single-file 1-line fix — goal-lock overhead > the work itself

Architecture: 2 Layers

[A] GOAL Input Sheet — fill per task (goal definition)
[B] Fixed Loop — same for every task (execution discipline)

Missing/contradictory input → STOP. Conflicts → PRIORITY. STOP RULES → halt.


Mode Selection

Mode Condition Input Sheet Loop
Quick 1 file, clear change, ≤10 lines 3 fields (GOAL/DONE/SCOPE) DO→VERIFY only
Full Everything else All 7 fields B1~B5 full

User specifies /goal-lock quick, or change fits Quick criteria. When unsure, use Full.


[A] GOAL Input Sheet

Full Mode (7 fields)

## GOAL Input Sheet

### 1. GOAL
[Single measurable goal. No expansion.]

### 2. DONE EVIDENCE
[Completion proof. The evidence contract branches by artifact type —
don't force one shape onto both:]
- **Code artifact** → command to run + expected result. No subjective
  criteria.
  e.g.: `pytest tests/test_X.py -v` → 5 passed
  e.g.: `curl localhost:3000/api/health` → 200 OK
- **Non-code artifact** (writing, analysis, reports, designs, prompts, spec
  docs) → no exit code exists to demand. State the review contract instead:
  what a reviewer checks off, or what a named approver signs off on (e.g.
  "reviewer confirms the 3 required sections are present and each claim
  cites a source" or "user approves the draft"). This feeds directly into
  the REFINE loop below (VERIFY/REFINE split) rather than VERIFY's execution
  path.

**Adversarial criteria design**: when setting DONE EVIDENCE, ask first "how
could an agent game this criterion." An unblocked loophole tends to get
found eventually — threshold relaxation, mock wrapping, hardcoding all
exploit a DONE EVIDENCE that was underspecified to begin with. Check for
loopholes at design time, especially on long-running or repeated tasks.

**Evidence-Rigor Pre-spec** [borrowed from ultraprompt]: when DONE EVIDENCE
includes concurrency, benchmark, p99-style statistics, or long-running-process
claims, pre-check the verification agent's evidence-rigor rules (N≥5 repeats,
before/after symmetry, evidence-scope matching, flaky-means-new-bug,
positive-signal-required) and write DONE EVIDENCE to already satisfy them —
this prevents a later insufficient-evidence rejection at the verify step by
fixing the design at spec time instead.

### 3. CONTEXT
[Current state · existing structure · prior decisions · dependencies · known constraints]

### 4. STARTING POINT
[Files/logs/tests to look at first. Start here, no broad exploration.]

### 5. SCOPE
- **Include**: [Editable area + required work]
- **Exclude**: [Out of bounds · unrelated refactors · new features · production behavior changes]
  - **Capability-spillover (flag, don't fix)**: other bugs, design/structural
    improvement ideas, or similar edge cases noticed mid-task all stay in
    Exclude. Report them separately (one inline line, or a follow-up task)
    and return to the current GOAL. Stronger models trend toward "fixing it
    all while I'm in here" — scope is a lock, not a ceiling.

### 6. CONSTRAINTS
- New dependencies: allow/forbid
- Network/API calls: allow/forbid
- Commit/PR/push: allow/forbid
- Migration/DB changes: allow/forbid
- Destructive actions: allow/forbid

### 7. BUDGET
[Time/token/call/cost limits. Follow if given, don't invent if not.]

### 8. EVAL TYPE (optional — only for tasks measuring a skill/hook/gate's own reliability)
[yes — this GOAL measures whether the verification logic itself actually works]
[no or omit — regular implementation. Normal DO→VERIFY iteration is allowed]

Read the full file on GitHub · 641 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. 5d ago Changed · +83 lines 4b2220a17ba7
  2. 13d ago First seen · 558 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 6e8336a05b86

Subscribe to this mod's changes

goal-lock is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlexZio00/sovereign-skills (129 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 7,906 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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