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 skills add deciqAI/knowledge-skills --skill opportunity-costgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/deciqAI/knowledge-skillsWrote 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/deciqai/knowledge-skills/opportunity-cost)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/opportunity-cost"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/opportunity-cost/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/opportunity-cost"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/opportunity-cost.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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 | $0.00107 | $0.01740 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00053 | $0.00870 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00021 | $0.00348 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00011 | $0.00174 |
Grade A, and why
opportunity-cost 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 9d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 124 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Opportunity Cost
Overview
Opportunity cost is the true cost of any choice: the value of the next-best alternative you give up. Accounting cost is what you pay; opportunity cost is what you forego. The two diverge whenever resources are scarce — which is always.
Bastiat (1850) established the foundational insight: every visible benefit forecloses an invisible alternative. Buchanan (1969) formalized it: cost is subjective, prospective, decision-maker-specific — the accountant's number and the economist's number can diverge by 10x.
Composes with expected-value-and-kelly, first-principles, pareto-principle, sunk-cost-fallacy, compound-interest.
When to Use
- Allocating budget, headcount, or founder-time across competing options
- Evaluating an investment vs. holding cash (or vs. another investment)
- Considering a "free" benefit whose hidden cost is time/attention
- Any "this is good for X" claim that ignores the alternative use of the same resources
- Weighing AI capex (GPU spend, model training vs. renting APIs), an AI pivot, or a quarter of roadmap/founder-time against the best forgone alternative amid 2024–2026 AI valuations and adoption
Not when: alternatives are genuinely zero-value; resources are not scarce; decision is reversible at near-zero cost.
Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)
- Engine mode: user has a concrete resource-allocation decision → run The Process directly.
- Coach mode: user is unfamiliar or has no concrete case → guide step by step.
In Coach mode, respond one step at a time. Each [WAIT] is a hard stop — output only that step's question, then stop.
- One-line: before committing resources to X, ask what next-best alternative you're giving up — that foregone value is the true cost.
- Check fit: if alternatives are genuinely zero-value, OC adds no information. Otherwise: apply.
- Elicit the choice and the resources being committed.
[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]
- Work through 3-5 realistic alternatives and estimate the value of the best one.
[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]
- Close: decision named with OC explicit + non-financial OCs surfaced + "would I choose this if I treated the OC as a real expense?"
[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]
What ships with it
3 files 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.
- 9d ago First seen · 124 lines · 107 tokens per session scan A f2f769be1a21
opportunity-cost is a skill published in the GitHub repository deciqAI/knowledge-skills (10 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 107 tokens to every session and 1,740 once invoked, about $0.0005 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
invoice-chase
Runs collections on late invoices: builds an aging ladder (current/30/60/90+), assigns each invoice a rung on an escalation sequence with ready-to-send emails — friendly nudge, firm reminder with late-fee mention, final notice — plus a phone script, tone rules that preserve the relationship, a chase log, and…
audit-support
Gets the books audit-ready: builds the PBC (prepared-by-client) list by area, drafts walkthrough narratives for key cycles (revenue, purchases, payroll), matches auditor samples to support, prepares tie-out schedules, tracks open items with owners and due dates, and drafts responses to findings. Use when the user says…
financial-statements
Builds a full statement set — P&L, balance sheet, and indirect cash flow — from a trial balance or transaction export, mapping accounts to a standard chart and proving every tie-out in code. Use when the user says 'build a P&L from this trial balance', 'turn this export into financials', 'I need a balance sheet for…
plan-payroll
Plans payroll cash: true loaded cost per hire (gross plus employer taxes, benefits, tools), a payroll calendar with cutoffs and cash-out dates, a scenario table for new hire vs raise vs contractor-vs-employee, and a payroll-to-revenue check against rough industry bands. Use when the user asks "can I afford to hire"…
review-contract
Clause-by-clause contract review — inventories key clauses (term, termination, liability cap, indemnity, IP, payment, confidentiality, governing law, auto-renewal), flags deviations from market-standard positions with RED/YELLOW/GREEN severity and verbatim quotes, drafts redline language, and sets negotiation…
tax-prep
Organizes tax season — an organizer, not tax advice: a document checklist by category (income, expenses, assets, payroll, prior filings), an expense-category sweep that flags plausibly missed deductions in generic jurisdiction-agnostic categories, a quarterly-estimate calendar template, a clean handoff pack for the…