constitution-check

constitution-check is a skill for Claude Code from evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game. It costs 103 tokens per session (609 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A review gate that checks a software plan or code change against twelve stated build principles before work starts or is marked complete.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review a drafted plan, inspect a code diff, or verify that a completed change meets the project's constitution.
Why use it?
It catches unsupported claims, unresolved decisions, and principle violations before they become part of the build or are presented as finished work.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the skin-in-the-game plugin — 6 skills, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to review a drafted plan, inspect a code diff, or verify that a completed change meets the project's constitution.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/constitution-check
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 evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game --skill constitution-check
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skin-in-the-game, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills, 1 hook.

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 constitution-check

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/constitution-check/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/constitution-check)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/constitution-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/constitution-check/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 constitution-check

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/constitution-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/constitution-check.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 103 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 609 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 $0.00103 $0.00609
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.00304
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00122
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00061

Measured 11d ago against content hash dc9c2c8198ca, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

constitution-check 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 11d 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/constitution-check/SKILL.md · 37 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 37 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Constitution Check

A constitution that isn't checked is decoration. This skill is the enforcement gate: it reviews a concrete plan or diff against the twelve principles and flags real violations before they ship. It fires at two moments — after a plan is drafted, before you build it, and before you call a build done.

Read PRINCIPLES.md at the plugin root for the twelve, then review the work in front of you against each. Be concrete: a principle you can't point at a specific line or choice for is a principle you can't enforce.

How to run the check

Go principle by principle. For each, decide: does this plan/diff honor it, violate it, or not apply?

  • 0 · Operating Contract — Am I about to escalate something I should own, or own something I should escalate?
  • 1 Amplify / own — Am I handing the human work they shouldn't have to bless?
  • 2 Different plane · 3 Durable thesis — Does this serve the durable goal, or just a local win?
  • 4 Reality-graded · 5 Honesty — Is every claim of success something I actually verified? Any vanity metric? Any fake pass?
  • 6 Grill · 7 Delete — Is there an unresolved CEO-line decision I'm assuming through? A requirement here I should delete rather than build?
  • 8 Research · 9 Build-on-top · 10 Density · 11 Clean — Did I read before writing? Am I co-opting the cleanest substrate or hand-rolling? Am I diluting scope? Is this clean, or a Frankenstein patch?

Output format

Report only what's load-bearing:

Constitution Check
✅ Honored:  <principles that clearly pass — one line>
⚠️  Violations:
   - P<n> <name>: <the specific line/choice that violates it> → <recommended fix>
🚪 Escalate:  <any CEO-line decision surfaced by P6/P7 that needs the human>

If there are no violations, say so plainly — do not manufacture findings to look thorough (that would itself violate Principle 5). A clean plan is a clean plan.

The test

Every principle must be checkable against something concrete in the plan or diff. If you can't point to the line, you can't enforce the principle — sharpen the principle or sharpen the plan.

Read the full file on GitHub · 37 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. 11d ago First seen · 37 lines · 103 tokens per session scan A dc9c2c8198ca

Subscribe to this mod's changes

constitution-check is a skill published in the GitHub repository evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game (1 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 103 tokens to every session and 609 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 2026-08-31.

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