principle-never-block-on-the-human

principle-never-block-on-the-human is a skill for Claude Code from backnotprop/pstack. It costs 46 tokens per session (348 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of principle-never-block-on-the-human, MIT.

A working rule for coding agents to continue with reasonable, reversible decisions instead of pausing to ask for permission at every step.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for implementing code, editing notes, splitting tasks, and handling other reversible work while limiting questions to genuine ambiguity or irreversible actions.
Why use it?
It keeps routine work moving and lets a person review the result afterward. It still reserves confirmation for unclear requests and actions that cannot be undone, such as deleting production data or sending messages.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Good fit It is for implementing code, editing notes, splitting tasks, and handling other reversible work while limiting questions to genuine ambiguity or irreversible actions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-never-block-on-the-human
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-never-block-on-the-human
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/backnotprop/pstack

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 principle-never-block-on-the-human

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-never-block-on-the-human.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-never-block-on-the-human)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-never-block-on-the-human"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/principle-never-block-on-the-human.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 46 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 348 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 100% 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 $0.00046 $0.00348
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00174
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00070
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00035

Measured 8d ago against content hash f656f3b7581d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

principle-never-block-on-the-human 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 8d 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

100% identical to principle-never-block-on-the-human — 0 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-never-block-on-the-human/SKILL.md · 24 lines

What it actually says

Never Block on the Human

The human supervises asynchronously. Agents must stay unblocked: make reasonable decisions, proceed, and let the human course-correct after the fact. Code is cheap. Waiting is expensive.

Why: Every permission pause stalls the pipeline and makes the human the bottleneck. Since code changes are reversible and reviewable, a wrong decision usually costs less than blocking.

Pattern:

  • Proceed, then present. Do the work, show the result. Don't ask "should I do X?" Do X, explain why.
  • Reserve questions for genuine ambiguity. Ask only when you truly cannot infer intent from context.
  • Make the system self-healing. When you notice a problem, log it and fix it in the next round.
  • Supervision is async. The human reviews plans, diffs, and changes on their own schedule. Design workflows for review-after-the-fact.
  • Code is cheap, attention is scarce. A wrong implementation costs minutes to fix. A blocked agent costs the human's attention to unblock.

Boundaries:

  • Irreversible actions (force-push, delete production data, send external messages) still require confirmation.
  • Reversible actions (write code, edit notes, split tasks) should proceed without blocking.
  • Product direction comes from the human; execution should not block.
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. 8d ago First seen · 24 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A f656f3b7581d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

principle-never-block-on-the-human is a skill published in the GitHub repository backnotprop/pstack (201 stars, last pushed 19d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 348 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to principle-never-block-on-the-human, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

local-ai-agents

Build local-first AI agents that run entirely on a developer workstation with Microsoft Foundry Local and Qwen function-calling models. Covers Small Language Models (SLMs), the OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, sandboxed local tools, local RAG with Chroma, local MCP servers, hybrid cloud/local routing, and the…

microsoft/ai-agents-for-beginners · 200 tokens

next-cache-components-adoption

Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…

vercel/next.js · 95 tokens

next-partial-prefetching-adoption

Turn on Partial Prefetching in a Next.js app and work through the insights it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable or adopt Partial Prefetching, flip the partialPrefetching flag, opt routes in with export const prefetch = 'partial', audit Link prefetch={true} behavior, preserve existing prefetched UI with…

vercel/next.js · 103 tokens

chronicle

Analyze Copilot session history for standup reports, usage tips, session search, and session reindexing. Use when the user asks for a standup, daily summary, usage tips, workflow recommendations, wants to search or find past sessions by keyword/file/PR, wants to reindex their session store, or asks about deleting…

microsoft/vscode · 72 tokens

babysit-pr

Babysit a GitHub pull request after creation by continuously polling review comments, CI checks/workflow runs, and mergeability state until the PR is merged/closed or user help is required. Diagnose failures, retry likely flaky failures up to 3 times, auto-fix/push branch-related issues when appropriate, and keep…

openai/codex · 114 tokens