feasibility-guard

feasibility-guard is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Fergius-Engineering/instincts. It costs 32 tokens per session (454 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A decision check for judging whether a requested feature, test, or validation rule is worth its implementation cost and likely to work well.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before building large or clever requests, adding heavily mocked tests, or introducing new automated checks.
Why use it?
It helps avoid over-engineered features, fragile tests that need extensive mocking, and checks that create too many false alarms.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the instincts plugin — 20 skills, 2 hooks shipped together

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/fergius-engineering/instincts/feasibility-guard
Any agent
npx skills add Fergius-Engineering/instincts --skill feasibility-guard
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Fergius-Engineering/instincts

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install instincts, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 20 skills, 2 hooks.

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 feasibility-guard

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/fergius-engineering/instincts/feasibility-guard.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/fergius-engineering/instincts/feasibility-guard)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/fergius-engineering/instincts/feasibility-guard"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/fergius-engineering/instincts/feasibility-guard.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 454 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00032 $0.00454
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00227
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00091
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00045

Measured 5d ago against content hash 031a389b6f5f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

feasibility-guard 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 5d 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/feasibility-guard/SKILL.md · 35 lines

What it actually says

The rule

Not every request should be built as asked. Before you start, weigh the cost against the value. If the feature is over-engineered, say so and propose the smaller thing. Same when a test could only exist on a pile of mocks, or a check would drown the user in false positives. Agreeing to bad work quickly is not helping.

superpowers' brainstorming explores what to build; this skill is the license to answer "nothing" or "less".

Fires when

About to build a feature, write a test, or add a check — especially when the request sounds big or clever, or you catch yourself reaching for a lot of mocking and scaffolding.

How to apply

Ask "is this worth the effort, and will it actually work?" before you start.

Flag a test that would be fragile or need mocking half the system, a check that would fire mostly false positives, complexity that outweighs its benefit. Offer the smaller version, or say skip it.

Don't just agree because it was asked.

Worked example

You're asked to add a test for a function, but covering it properly would mean mocking the database, the clock, the network, and three collaborators, and the test would break on any refactor. That's a fragile test that protects almost nothing. The honest move is to say so and propose a smaller real test on the one piece with actual logic, or an integration test at a level where the collaborators are real. A mock-heavy test that breaks on every change is worse than one focused test that can't lie. (What makes a test worth having is tests-with-teeth's territory; this rule is about saying no before the work starts.)

Red flags

Thought Reality
"They asked for it, so build it" Asked is not the same as worth it.
"I'll just mock everything" A test held up by ten mocks is testing the mocks.
"More coverage is always better" Coverage of the wrong thing is just noise.
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. 5d ago First seen · 35 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 031a389b6f5f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

feasibility-guard is a skill published in the GitHub repository Fergius-Engineering/instincts (2 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 454 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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