efficient-frontier

An orchestration method for using an expensive advanced model mainly for decisions that need judgment while assigning bounded research, coding, and testing work to cheaper agents.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to divide research, repository searches, documentation extraction, narrow code edits, testing, and log analysis among parallel subagents, then combine and review their results.
Why use it?
It reduces the amount of costly model time spent on repeatable or mechanical work while keeping architecture, prioritization, and final review centralized.

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/builderio/skills/efficient-frontier
Any agent
npx skills add BuilderIO/skills --skill efficient-frontier
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/BuilderIO/skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 687 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 $0.00047 $0.00687
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00344
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00137
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00069

Measured 2d ago against content hash d3bb746c5ec1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

efficient-frontier 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/efficient-frontier/SKILL.md · 77 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 77 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Efficient Frontier

Use the expensive frontier model where its marginal judgment matters. Push repeatable, bounded, or token-heavy work to cheaper/faster subagents.

Workflow

  1. Identify the frontier-only decisions: architecture, prioritization, ambiguity resolution, risk, synthesis, and final review.
  2. Identify delegable work: research scans, repository inventory, search, docs extraction, browser/testing passes, log reduction, test failure clustering, narrow coding, and mechanical edits.
  3. Spawn parallel subagents for independent slices with clear ownership, bounded scope, verification gates, and expected evidence.
  4. Require compact returns: findings, changed files, commands run, residual risk, stop conditions hit, and anything the frontier model must decide.
  5. Integrate and review centrally before presenting the result.

Handoff Packets

Write delegated prompts as self-contained packets. Assume the receiving agent has not seen the conversation. Include the repo path, objective, scope, out-of-scope areas, relevant files or search targets, expected return format, verification commands, and stop conditions.

Useful stop conditions:

  • The live code does not match the assumption in the handoff.
  • A verification command fails twice after a reasonable fix or retry.
  • The work appears to require files outside the assigned scope.
  • The agent cannot produce concrete evidence for its claim.

Review Loop

Treat delegated output as evidence to inspect, not a verdict to forward. Reopen important cited files, skim high-risk diffs, and rerun or spot-check the verification that matters before claiming completion. If delegated agents disagree, resolve the disagreement at the frontier-model layer.

Common Scenarios

Use these as soft suggestions:

  • Research: delegate broad repo scans, docs extraction, and source comparison; the frontier model keeps the judgment about what matters.
  • Coding: delegate bounded patches, refactors, or mechanical edits when file ownership is clear; integrate and review centrally.
  • Testing: let the frontier model choose the validation strategy and scripts, then use cheaper agents to run unit checks, browser flows, screenshots, and log reduction. Ask them to return exact commands, failures, likely causes, and whether the signal looks flaky, environmental, or product-relevant.
  • Debugging: send independent agents after separate theories, logs, or repro paths; keep the final diagnosis with the frontier model.

Read the full file on GitHub · 77 lines

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 First seen · 77 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A d3bb746c5ec1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

efficient-frontier is a skill published in the GitHub repository BuilderIO/skills (4,152 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 687 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

writing-skills

Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment.

obra/superpowers · 20 tokens

claude-automation-recommender

Analyze a codebase and recommend Claude Code automations (hooks, subagents, skills, plugins, MCP servers). Use when user asks for automation recommendations, wants to optimize their Claude Code setup, mentions improving Claude Code workflows, asks how to first set up Claude Code for a project, or wants to know what…

anthropics/claude-plugins-official · 77 tokens

using-agent-skills

Discovers and invokes agent skills. Use when starting a session or when you need to discover which skill applies to the current task. This is the meta-skill that governs how all other skills are discovered and invoked.

addyosmani/agent-skills · 48 tokens

make-skill

Use this skill when sedimenting a session into a reusable workspace skill. Triggers when the user wants to turn the current conversation, workflow, or troubleshooting path into a SKILL.md. Phrases like 'turn this into a skill', 'remember how I did X', 'save this workflow', 'make a skill from this', and any /make-skill…

agentscope-ai/QwenPaw · 85 tokens

make-skill

用于把当前会话沉淀为可复用的 workspace skill。当用户希望把当前对话、工作流或排错路径写成 SKILL.md 时触发。触发表达包括「把这个变成 skill」「记住我是怎么做 X 的」「保存这个工作流」「make a skill from this」以及任何 /make-skill 调用。.

agentscope-ai/QwenPaw · 84 tokens

agent-platform-prompt-management

Manages and orchestrates prompts in Agent Platform. Use when you need to create, list, retrieve, version, or delete managed prompts in Agent Platform. Don't use for model training, model deployment to endpoints, or managing non-Agent Platform prompts.

google/skills · 55 tokens