encoding-format-advisor

encoding-format-advisor is a skill for Claude Code from bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills. It costs 219 tokens per session (10,109 once invoked), scanned B, original, CC-BY-SA-4.0.

A guide for choosing how data is encoded for storage or communication, using formats such as JSON, Protobuf, Thrift, or Avro. It also covers changing data schemas without breaking older or newer clients.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to compare encoding formats and plan backward- and forward-compatible schema changes for rolling upgrades.
Why use it?
It helps avoid compatibility failures when different versions of a service or application run at the same time during a gradual update.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the designing-data-intensive-applications plugin — 14 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to compare encoding formats and plan backward- and forward-compatible schema changes for rolling upgrades.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/encoding-format-advisor
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 bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills --skill encoding-format-advisor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install designing-data-intensive-applications, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 14 skills.

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 encoding-format-advisor

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/encoding-format-advisor/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/encoding-format-advisor)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/encoding-format-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/encoding-format-advisor/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 encoding-format-advisor

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/encoding-format-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/encoding-format-advisor.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 219 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 10,109 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 2 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin unknown 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 $0.00219 $0.10109
Opus 5.5 $0.00088 $0.04044
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00044 $0.02022
Haiku 4.5 $0.00022 $0.01011

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 919f1465b3da, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

encoding-format-advisor scanned grade B with 2 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 1mo 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.

Unrestricted tool accessmediumExcessive agency

A wildcard tool grant or "run any command" leaves no least-privilege boundary at all.

- Security implications are understood and mitigated: deserializing untrusted bytes can execute arbitrary code

Makes network callslowCapability

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

- 5 = Directly human-readable; pasteble into browser/curl for debugging
books/designing-data-intensive-applications/skills/encoding-format-advisor/SKILL.md · 596 lines

The source is not reproduced here

Licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0

The repository is licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0, which this catalogue does not treat as permission to reproduce the file. Read it at the source.

Read it on GitHub

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. 1mo ago First seen · 596 lines · 219 tokens per session scan B 919f1465b3da

Subscribe to this mod's changes

encoding-format-advisor is a skill published in the GitHub repository bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills (41 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0. It adds 219 tokens to every session and 10,109 once invoked, about $0.0009 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it B with 2 findings (unrestricted tool access, 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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