design-an-interface

A design exercise that creates several substantially different shapes for a software module's interface. An interface is the set of operations other code uses to work with that module.

In plain words
What is it for?
It gathers requirements, generates at least three alternative interfaces with different constraints, and compares their method counts, flexibility, and fit for common use cases.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of committing too early to the first design idea, which may expose too much or fit the callers poorly.

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/docs-plus/docs.plus/design-an-interface
Any agent
npx skills add docs-plus/docs.plus --skill design-an-interface
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/docs-plus/docs.plus

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 711 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 95% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00043 $0.00711
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00356
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00142
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00071

Measured 2d ago against content hash a2596e9fa2d5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-an-interface 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

This is a copy

95% identical to api-shape-explorer — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/design-an-interface/SKILL.md · 95 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 95 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design an Interface

Based on "Design It Twice" from "A Philosophy of Software Design": your first idea is unlikely to be the best. Generate multiple radically different designs, then compare.

Workflow

1. Gather Requirements

Before designing, understand:

  • What problem does this module solve?
  • Who are the callers? (other modules, external users, tests)
  • What are the key operations?
  • Any constraints? (performance, compatibility, existing patterns)
  • What should be hidden inside vs exposed?

Ask: "What does this module need to do? Who will use it?"

2. Generate Designs (Parallel Sub-Agents)

Spawn 3+ sub-agents simultaneously using Task tool. Each must produce a radically different approach.

Prompt template for each sub-agent:

Design an interface for: [module description]

Requirements: [gathered requirements]

Constraints for this design: [assign a different constraint to each agent]
- Agent 1: "Minimize method count - aim for 1-3 methods max"
- Agent 2: "Maximize flexibility - support many use cases"
- Agent 3: "Optimize for the most common case"
- Agent 4: "Take inspiration from [specific paradigm/library]"

Output format:
1. Interface signature (types/methods)
2. Usage example (how caller uses it)
3. What this design hides internally
4. Trade-offs of this approach

3. Present Designs

Show each design with:

  1. Interface signature - types, methods, params
  2. Usage examples - how callers actually use it in practice
  3. What it hides - complexity kept internal

Present designs sequentially so user can absorb each approach before comparison.

4. Compare Designs

After showing all designs, compare them on:

  • Interface simplicity: fewer methods, simpler params
  • General-purpose vs specialized: flexibility vs focus
  • Implementation efficiency: does shape allow efficient internals?
  • Depth: small interface hiding significant complexity (good) vs large interface with thin implementation (bad)
  • Ease of correct use vs ease of misuse

Read the full file on GitHub · 95 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 · 95 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A a2596e9fa2d5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-an-interface is a skill published in the GitHub repository docs-plus/docs.plus (88 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 711 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 95% identical to api-shape-explorer, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

docx

Read, create, and convert Microsoft Word (.docx) documents — extract text and tables, build reports from markdown/JSON, and export to PDF.

zhixuli0406/DuDuClaw · 34 tokens

document-converter

Convert Office documents (PPTX, DOCX, XLSX, PDF, HTML, CSV, JSON, XML, images) to Markdown using Microsoft MarkItDown. Provides the agent with conversion strategies for academic and research workflows.

wentorai/Research-Claw · 50 tokens

docx-manipulation

Create, edit, and manipulate Word documents programmatically using python-docx.

claude-office-skills/skills · 20 tokens

add-format

End-to-end checklist for adding a new input or output format to AILANG Parse (docparse). Use when the user says 'add support for X format', 'wire up a new parser', 'add .foo format', 'add a parser for .bar', 'support .baz files', 'ship format X', 'can we parse .qux', 'new format rollout', or mentions a file extension…

sunholo-data/ailang-parse · 183 tokens

landing-page

Create a new AILANG Parse documentation/landing page targeting a specific keyword or topic. Use when user says 'new landing page', 'new page for X', 'create a page about X', 'landing page for keyword X', or wants to add a documentation page to the docs/ site. Also use when the user references long-tail keywords, SEO…

sunholo-data/ailang-parse · 81 tokens

benchmark

Run OfficeDocBench evaluation and refresh benchmark scores across the AILANG Parse website. Use when the user says 'run benchmarks', 'rerun the benchmark', 'refresh benchmark numbers', 'update bench scores', 'regenerate summary.json', mentions OfficeDocBench, asks to evaluate parsers, asks why scores are out of sync…

sunholo-data/ailang-parse · 115 tokens