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 agentmods add skills/dshakes/compass/using-compassnpx skills add dshakes/compass --skill using-compassgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dshakes/compassWhat 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 | $0.00083 | $0.01031 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00042 | $0.00515 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00017 | $0.00206 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00103 |
Grade A, and why
using-compass 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 60 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Using compass
compass is already wired into this environment. Before you work ad-hoc, check whether a compass capability does it better — and safer.
What you have (reach for these)
| Need | Reach for | How |
|---|---|---|
Write/repair a repo's CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md |
bootstrap-agent-config skill | grounded in the actual repo |
| Security pass before shipping | harden skill · compass scan · compass redteam |
secrets · injection · supply-chain |
| Pick the cheapest correct model | compass route "<task>" |
haiku/sonnet/opus, eval-scored |
| Review/implement with the right specialist | route skill · /review · /team-review |
domain-routed, not generic |
| Everyday commands | /tdd /spec /ship /pr /adr /triage /scaffold /cost /onboard /sdlc |
saved workflows |
| Run untrusted code | compass sandbox -- <cmd> |
a real OS boundary, not the guardrail |
| Verify a release | compass verify <vX.Y.Z> |
SLSA provenance |
| See impact / spend | compass impact · compass spend · compass dashboard |
the ledgers |
| Find a loop's next work (discovery) | morning-triage skill | reads CI · issues · commits, judges, hands off |
| Take open PRs end-to-end | pr-shepherd skill (/loop 15m /pr-shepherd) |
diagnoses red checks, fixes mechanical ones, stops at the merge gate |
| Put a repo (or many) on compass in one command | `compass enable <owner/repo | dir> ...` |
| Stay ahead of code you didn't write | compass digest |
sample merged changes & explain them (comprehension guard) |
| Cap an unattended loop's spend | COMPASS_MAX_USD_DAY · compass spend --today --max-usd N |
per-day circuit breaker |
The guardrail (catastrophic commands, secret writes) and the red-team layer (prompt-injection, context poisoning, safety-override) run automatically via hooks — you don't invoke them, but know they're watching.
Before you start (the checklist)
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 60 lines · 83 tokens per session scan A f0788fee660d
using-compass is a skill published in the GitHub repository dshakes/compass (19 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 83 tokens to every session and 1,031 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
systematic-debugging
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.
brainstorming
You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.
auto-perf-optimize
Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.
chat-perf
Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.
chat-pet-sprite-creation
Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.
cpu-profile-analysis
Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…