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.
npx agentmods add skills/buildmoonshot/skillpacks/arcpy-vs-arcgis-apinpx skills add buildmoonshot/skillpacks --skill arcpy-vs-arcgis-apigit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/buildmoonshot/skillpacksWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/buildmoonshot/skillpacks/arcpy-vs-arcgis-api)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/buildmoonshot/skillpacks/arcpy-vs-arcgis-api"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/buildmoonshot/skillpacks/arcpy-vs-arcgis-api.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00073 | $0.00517 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00036 | $0.00259 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00015 | $0.00103 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00052 |
Grade A, and why
arcpy-vs-arcgis-api 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 5d 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.
What it actually says
ArcPy vs. ArcGIS API for Python
Esri has two Python doors, and picking the wrong one means a missing license, an impossible deploy, or a 10x-harder script. Choose deliberately before writing code.
ArcPy — local Pro/Desktop + geoprocessing
- Runs inside the ArcGIS Pro/Desktop Python environment; needs a Pro license and install.
- Best for: heavy geoprocessing tools, editing local file geodatabases and enterprise (SDE) data, raster analysis, script/model tools, anything that leans on the desktop toolbox.
- Auth/context comes from the Pro install.
ArcGIS API for Python (arcgis) — web GIS over REST
- Talks to ArcGIS Online / Enterprise / Portal over REST; no Pro install required.
- Best for: querying and editing hosted feature layers/services, portal/content/user administration, web maps, publishing, and running in a server, notebook, or CI without a desktop license.
- Auth is explicit:
GIS(url, user, pwd)/ tokens.
The decision
- Local/SDE geodatabase + geoprocessing tools? → ArcPy.
- Hosted feature service / portal content / web layer, or running license-free on a server? → ArcGIS API for Python.
- Both are legitimate in one pipeline (e.g., ArcPy to process locally, the API to publish the result) — just don't force one into the other's job.
Don't do this
- Don't reach for ArcPy in a license-less server/CI context — it won't import.
- Don't try to push heavy local geoprocessing through the web API, or hand-roll REST calls when
arcgisalready wraps them.
Why this matters
This choice is made before any code, and it's expensive to reverse: discover it late and you've written a script that can't run where it needs to. Naming the environment (desktop vs web, licensed vs not) and the data (local gdb vs hosted service) up front picks the right tool the first time.
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.
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.
- 5d ago First seen · 36 lines · 73 tokens per session scan A a7fd7b9d4c6c
arcpy-vs-arcgis-api is a skill published in the GitHub repository buildmoonshot/skillpacks (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 517 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-31.
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