version-archaeology

version-archaeology is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Dragoon0x/taste-skills. It costs 45 tokens per session (265 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for studying how a product’s design changes across archived versions over time.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to compare at least three versions of a product, record what changed or stayed, and infer which design choices are central.
Why use it?
It separates lasting design decisions from temporary visual changes and identifies experiments that were later removed.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to compare at least three versions of a product, record what changed or stayed, and infer which design choices are central.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dragoon0x/taste-skills/version-archaeology
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 Dragoon0x/taste-skills --skill version-archaeology
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Dragoon0x/taste-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 version-archaeology

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dragoon0x/taste-skills/version-archaeology/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/dragoon0x/taste-skills/version-archaeology)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dragoon0x/taste-skills/version-archaeology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dragoon0x/taste-skills/version-archaeology/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 version-archaeology

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dragoon0x/taste-skills/version-archaeology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dragoon0x/taste-skills/version-archaeology.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 265 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 $0.00045 $0.00265
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00133
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00053
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00026

Measured 12d ago against content hash 26d4b119e079, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

version-archaeology 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/analysis/version-archaeology/SKILL.md · 32 lines

What it actually says

Version Archaeology

The decisions that survive redesigns are the load-bearing walls.

How to use

  • /version-archaeology Apply evolutionary analysis to a product's design history.

Constraints

Analysis Method

  • MUST compare at least 3 versions of the same product over time
  • MUST document for each version: what changed, what stayed, what was tried and reverted
  • MUST identify the persistent decisions (things that survived multiple redesigns)
  • SHOULD note the ratio of cosmetic changes to structural changes

What Persistence Means

  • Elements that survive 3+ redesigns are core taste decisions
  • Elements that change every redesign are cosmetic/trend-following
  • Elements that were added and then removed reveal failed experiments
  • MUST treat persistent decisions as evidence of what the team considers essential

Anti-Patterns

  • Only looking at the visual surface (layout changes) and missing structural persistence (information architecture)
  • Assuming newer versions are always better
  • Ignoring reverted changes (these are some of the most informative data points)
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 · 32 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 26d4b119e079

Subscribe to this mod's changes

version-archaeology is a skill published in the GitHub repository Dragoon0x/taste-skills (4 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 265 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 2026-08-31.

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