reality-check

reality-check is a skill for Claude Code from evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game. It costs 132 tokens per session (521 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reporting check that compares claims about completed work, tests, and metrics with what was actually observed.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before reporting results, test outcomes, success measures, or summaries of work.
Why use it?
It reduces false confidence from calling something finished or successful without evidence, and makes uncertainty visible.

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 before reporting results, test outcomes, success measures, or summaries of work.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/reality-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 reality-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 reality-check

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/reality-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game/reality-check.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 132 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 521 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 $0.00132 $0.00521
Opus 5 $0.00066 $0.00260
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00104
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00052

Measured 11d ago against content hash 01eb0aec1aec, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

reality-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/reality-check/SKILL.md · 30 lines

What it actually says

Reality Check

LLMs are systematically biased toward performing success — reporting a pass that wasn't observed, citing a metric that grades nothing, manufacturing a balanced-sounding take. This skill is the honesty gate. It runs two principles at once: measure only what reality grades (4), and honesty over performance (5).

Measure only what reality grades

Before you state a success criterion or a metric, ask: what reality settles this, and does the number change an action?

  • Real: it ships, it runs against real input, the test exercises real behavior, someone uses it.
  • Vanity: lines of code, % coverage as a goal, "looks done," confidence numbers on things nobody will act on. Cut them — a fake metric manufactures false confidence, which is worse than no metric.

Honesty over performance

  • If a test failed, say so, with the output. If you skipped a step, say so. If you're uncertain, show the uncertainty.
  • Flag, don't fake. Anything you couldn't verify is labeled unverified — never presented as a pass. An uncomputable check prints "not done," never a fabricated green.
  • Don't perform balance. Genuine one-sided evidence is signal; don't manufacture a counterpoint to look even-handed.
  • Don't perform rigor. A confident summary is not a verified one.

Before you say "done"

  1. Did I actually observe this working against real behavior — or am I inferring it?
  2. Is every metric I'm citing something reality grades and someone acts on?
  3. Have I flagged everything I could not verify?

If you can't answer #1 with "observed," report it as unverified.

The test

Report what's true, not what looks good. A fake pass is a debt that comes due at the worst possible time.

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 · 30 lines · 132 tokens per session scan A 01eb0aec1aec

Subscribe to this mod's changes

reality-check is a skill published in the GitHub repository evanmcgoogan/skin-in-the-game (1 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 132 tokens to every session and 521 once invoked, about $0.0007 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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