shaping

A collaborative method for defining a problem and exploring solution options with the user. It keeps requirements, solution designs, and detailed implementation plans consistent with one another.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to shape requirements, compare possible designs, define implementation slices, and keep planning documents aligned as decisions change.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of building the wrong solution or letting detailed plans drift away from the original requirements.

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/dcosson/h2/shaping
Any agent
npx skills add dcosson/h2 --skill shaping
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dcosson/h2

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 30 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,586 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 $0.00030 $0.05586
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.02793
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.01117
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00559

Measured 2d ago against content hash 2ea9742ecfe3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

shaping 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

  • shaping — 100% identical, 147 lines differ
  • shaping — 100% identical, 147 lines differ
internal/config/templates/styles/opinionated/skills/shaping/SKILL.md · 625 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 625 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Shaping Methodology

A structured approach for collaboratively defining problems and exploring solution options.


Multi-Level Consistency (Critical)

Shaping produces documents at different levels of abstraction. Truth must stay consistent across all levels.

The Document Hierarchy (high to low)

  1. Shaping doc — ground truth for R's, shapes, parts, fit checks
  2. Slices doc — ground truth for slice definitions, breadboards
  3. Individual slice plans (V1-plan, etc.) — ground truth for implementation details

The Principle

Each level summarizes or provides a view into the level(s) below it. Lower levels contain more detail; higher levels are designed views that help acquire context quickly.

Changes ripple in both directions:

  • Change at high level → trickles down: If you change the shaping doc's parts table, update the slices doc too.
  • Change at low level → trickles up: If a slice plan reveals a new mechanism or changes the scope of a slice, the Slices doc and shaping doc must reflect that.

The Practice

Whenever making a change:

  1. Identify which level you're touching
  2. Ask: "Does this affect documents above or below?"
  3. Update all affected levels in the same operation
  4. Never let documents drift out of sync

The system only works if the levels are consistent with each other.


Starting a Session

When kicking off a new shaping session, offer the user both entry points:

  • Start from R (Requirements) — Describe the problem, pain points, or constraints. Build up requirements and let shapes emerge.
  • Start from S (Shapes) — Sketch a solution already in mind. Capture it as a shape and extract requirements as you go.

There is no required order. Shaping is iterative — R and S inform each other throughout.

Working with an Existing Shaping Doc

When the shaping doc already has a selected shape:

  1. Display the fit check for the selected shape only — Show R × [selected shape] (e.g., R × F), not all shapes
  2. Summarize what is unsolved — Call out any requirements that are Undecided, or where the selected shape has ❌

Read the full file on GitHub · 625 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. 2d ago First seen · 625 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A 2ea9742ecfe3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

shaping is a skill published in the GitHub repository dcosson/h2 (159 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 30 tokens to every session and 5,586 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.

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