boundary-design

boundary-design is a skill for Claude Code from cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents. It costs 61 tokens per session (703 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for deciding where boundaries should go between modules, services, teams, products, or people and tools. It focuses on reducing leaked implementation details, coupling, and the effort of crossing a boundary.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for build-versus-buy decisions, API and service design, module decomposition, runtime configuration, and deciding whether a tool should assist or automate a person.
Why use it?
It helps prevent users from having to think in technical implementation terms and exposes cases where a design automates the wrong part of a task or hardcodes a decision too early.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the zetetic-team-subagents plugin — 16 skills, 2 commands, 23 agents, 7 hooks, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it for build-versus-buy decisions, API and service design, module decomposition, runtime configuration, and deciding whether a tool should assist or automate a person.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/boundary-design
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 cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents --skill boundary-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install zetetic-team-subagents, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 2 commands, 23 agents, 7 hooks, 1 MCP server.

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 boundary-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/boundary-design/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/boundary-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/boundary-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/boundary-design/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 boundary-design

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/boundary-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents/boundary-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 61 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 703 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 $0.00061 $0.00703
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00351
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00141
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00070

Measured 12d ago against content hash 9599ef0e6a74, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

boundary-design 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 12d 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/boundary-design/SKILL.md · 51 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 51 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Boundary Design

Problem shape: something must be split, wrapped, or interfaced — a system into modules, a workflow between human and tool, a product between build and buy — and the current boundary leaks implementation detail, transaction cost, or cognitive load across it.

Relevant geniuses

Agent Use when
coase build vs buy; team/service boundary placement — compare transaction costs across the boundary, not ideology
hopper users forced to think in implementation vocabulary — build the translator; debugging under-invested; a tool defended out of familiarity
engelbart "automate this" proposed where augmenting the person is the real win; the team doesn't use its own tool; design for expert ceiling, not just novice floor
kay decisions hardcoded that could bind late; tight coupling via direct calls; users need to modify the system at runtime
alexander decompose by misfit; the design needs a generative sequence of patterns rather than a top-down blueprint
simon the system should be nearly decomposable — strong interactions inside modules, weak between; hierarchy as the default shape
liskov the boundary is an interface — write the behavioral contract so implementations are substitutable
ranganathan information exists but nobody can find it — faceted classification and findability laws

Invocation

  1. Pick the best-fit agent above. If two or more fit, run tools/genius-invoker.sh route "<problem>" and take the top ranked match.
  2. Load it: tools/genius-invoker.sh invoke <agent> "<problem>", then read agents/genius/<agent>.md in full.
  3. Apply the agent's <workflow> step by step and answer in its <output-format>. Every proposed boundary states what crosses it, what it hides, and what it costs (Clean Architecture layer rules apply, §2.2).
  4. Typical chain: coase places the boundary → simon shapes the decomposition → liskov contracts the interface. Run via tools/genius-invoker.sh compose coase liskov -- "<problem>".
  5. If no shape above matches, use a standard team agent instead.

Read the full file on GitHub · 51 lines

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. 12d ago First seen · 51 lines · 61 tokens per session scan A 9599ef0e6a74

Subscribe to this mod's changes

boundary-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository cdeust/zetetic-team-subagents (7 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 61 tokens to every session and 703 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.