principle-optimization-never-dependency

principle-optimization-never-dependency is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from bostonaholic/team. It costs 34 tokens per session (196 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A rule for optional enhancement steps such as extra agents, vendor checks, uploads, or screenshots. They can improve the result but are not allowed to become required for completion.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when adding secondary tools or processing stages that should help when available but must not block the core task.
Why use it?
If an optional service is missing or fails, the main work can continue with an inline fallback. The failure is reported without weakening the final result.

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 team plugin — 88 skills, 13 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it when adding secondary tools or processing stages that should help when available but must not block the core task.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bostonaholic/team/principle-optimization-never-dependency
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 bostonaholic/team --skill principle-optimization-never-dependency
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bostonaholic/team

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install team, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 88 skills, 13 agents, 2 hooks.

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-optimization-never-dependency

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bostonaholic/team/principle-optimization-never-dependency.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bostonaholic/team/principle-optimization-never-dependency)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bostonaholic/team/principle-optimization-never-dependency"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bostonaholic/team/principle-optimization-never-dependency.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 34 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 196 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 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 $0.00034 $0.00196
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00098
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00039
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00020

Measured 2d ago against content hash b50d65772757, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

principle-optimization-never-dependency 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 2d 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.

skills/principle-optimization-never-dependency/SKILL.md · 16 lines

What it actually says

Optimization, Never a Dependency

Treat nested sub-agents, second-vendor passes, screenshot uploads, and couriers as optional enhancements: Skip loudly on any failure, fall back inline, and preserve the outcome.

  • On absence, error, or silence, perform the work inline with available tools and continue; never fail solely because the enhancement failed.
  • Never soften a verdict because an optional pass did not run; record the skip and reason under principle-skip-loudly.
  • Never let enhancements block, retry-loop, or prompt the user.
  • Discard malformed enhancement results and use the fallback; never repair and trust them.
  • Apply this rule only to enhancements; guarantees fail closed under principle-fail-closed.
Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 2d ago Changed · -16 lines · -21 tokens per session b50d65772757
  2. 4d ago First seen · 32 lines · 55 tokens per session scan A 80b58d8bf139

Subscribe to this mod's changes

principle-optimization-never-dependency is a skill published in the GitHub repository bostonaholic/team (11 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 196 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 2026-09-03.

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