principle-exhaust-the-design-space

principle-exhaust-the-design-space is a skill for Claude Code, Cursor from backnotprop/pstack. It costs 41 tokens per session (78 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of principle-exhaust-the-design-space, MIT.

A design rule for exploring several genuinely different solutions when a new interface interaction or architecture has no established example in the codebase. The alternatives are compared before one is selected.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for unfamiliar user-interface interactions, architectural decisions with competing approaches, and product designs where the best option depends on how they feel or work in practice.
Why use it?
It lowers the risk of committing to an awkward interaction or structure when multiple reasonable choices are available.

Skill for Claude CodeCursor

Written for Claude Code and Cursor: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter, but also shipped in a Cursor plugin.

Part of the pstack plugin — 61 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it for unfamiliar user-interface interactions, architectural decisions with competing approaches, and product designs where the best option depends on how they feel or work in practice.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-exhaust-the-design-space
About the project

pstack is a collection of plain Agent Skills and engineering principles that guide AI-assisted software development across coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Cursor, and OpenCode. It is for developers who want reusable practices for tasks including testing, technical writing, debugging, review, and coordinating agent work. The catalogue entries are the project's skills, agents, and plugin.

backnotprop/pstack · 2,988 stars · on GitHub

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 backnotprop/pstack --skill principle-exhaust-the-design-space
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/backnotprop/pstack

Made for: Claude Code, Cursor.

Or install pstack, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 61 skills, 2 agents.

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 principle-exhaust-the-design-space

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-exhaust-the-design-space/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-exhaust-the-design-space)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-exhaust-the-design-space"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-exhaust-the-design-space/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 principle-exhaust-the-design-space

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-exhaust-the-design-space"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-exhaust-the-design-space.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 78 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. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 13 Oct 2026
  • Snyk pass 13 Oct 2026
How audits are shown
Origin 97% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00041 $0.00078
Opus 5.5 $0.00016 $0.00031
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00008 $0.00016
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00008

Measured 15d ago against content hash 2de83d99f93f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

principle-exhaust-the-design-space 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 15d 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

This is a copy

97% identical to principle-exhaust-the-design-space — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/principle-exhaust-the-design-space/SKILL.md · 10 lines

What it actually says

Exhaust the Design Space

It also applies to product design decisions where user experience depends on feel, not logic.

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. 15d ago Changed · -12 lines 2de83d99f93f
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 22 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A 8583310d7297

Subscribe to this mod's changes

principle-exhaust-the-design-space is a skill published in the GitHub repository backnotprop/pstack (2,988 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 78 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 97% identical to principle-exhaust-the-design-space, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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