principle-laziness-protocol

principle-laziness-protocol is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from backnotprop/pstack. It costs 42 tokens per session (326 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A refactoring rule that aims for the smallest change and the least code needed to solve a problem, with deletion considered before adding new abstractions.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for refactoring code, reviewing diff size, removing wrappers and duplicated choices, flattening call paths, and avoiding abstractions that do not solve a real need.
Why use it?
It limits over-engineering, deep call chains, duplicated decisions, and unnecessary data passed through multiple layers. Smaller changes are easier to review and maintain.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/backnotprop/pstack/principle-laziness-protocol
Any agent
npx skills add backnotprop/pstack --skill principle-laziness-protocol
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/backnotprop/pstack

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 principle-laziness-protocol

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-laziness-protocol.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-laziness-protocol)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-laziness-protocol"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-laziness-protocol.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 326 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. 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 $0.00042 $0.00326
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.00163
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00065
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00033

Measured 4d ago against content hash 8999fda9fde6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

principle-laziness-protocol 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 4d 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

4 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/principle-laziness-protocol/SKILL.md · 19 lines

What it actually says

Laziness Protocol

Writing code is cheap for you, which makes over-engineering easy. Counter it by borrowing a human maintainer's fatigue. Aim for the most result with the least code and complexity.

  • Prefer deletion. When asked to refactor or improve, look for removals before additions.
  • Maintain a flat call hierarchy. Avoid deep call chains. A rich interface that hides substantial work is not a deep call chain. If answering a question requires tracing through more than 3 files or layers, flatten it.
  • Consolidate decisions. Do not repeat the same choice in several places. Put it behind one source of truth and pass the result as a simple flag.
  • Minimize the diff. Make the smallest change that solves the problem. Fewer lines beat "elegant" boilerplate.
  • Question the threading. If a task asks you to pass a new signal through types, schemas, pipelines, or similar layers, stop and look for a more direct path.
  • Sweat the small leaks. Remove tiny pass-throughs, representation leaks, and duplicated choices before they spread. Small leaks compound into permanent coordination costs.

Prime directive: If a human developer would find the code exhausting to maintain, it is a bad solution. Be lazy. Stay simple.

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. 4d ago First seen · 19 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 8999fda9fde6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

principle-laziness-protocol is a skill published in the GitHub repository backnotprop/pstack (181 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 326 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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