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 skills add GiangGiangTran/ba-skills --skill technical-basicsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/GiangGiangTran/ba-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/gianggiangtran/ba-skills/technical-basics)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gianggiangtran/ba-skills/technical-basics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gianggiangtran/ba-skills/technical-basics/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gianggiangtran/ba-skills/technical-basics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gianggiangtran/ba-skills/technical-basics.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00037 | $0.01984 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00015 | $0.00794 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00397 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00198 |
Grade A, and why
technical-basics 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 2mo 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 — 321 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Technical Basics for BA
You don't need to code. You need to understand trade-offs.
What is Technical Domain Knowledge?
Definition: Understanding how technology systems work, their constraints, scalability boundaries, and design trade-offs - enough to have smart conversations with engineers.
Why it matters:
- Unrealistic requirements: Asking for impossible things
- Missed constraints: Not understanding why engineer says "no"
- Bad prioritization: Not realizing feature X is 100x harder than Y
- Poor decisions: Technical trade-offs seem obvious to engineer, mystery to you
When to Use:
- ✅ Assessing feature feasibility
- ✅ Understanding technical constraints
- ✅ Evaluating architecture options
- ✅ Discussing scalability implications
- ✅ Making informed technical trade-offs
5 Core Technical Concepts
1. Scalability: The Numbers
How many users can system handle?
TYPICAL SCALABILITY JOURNEY:
10-100 users:
- Single server (everything on one machine)
- Database on same server
- Works great for MVP
- Cost: $10-50/month
100-1,000 users:
- Separate database server
- Load balancer in front
- Caching layer added
- Cost: $100-500/month
1,000-10,000 users:
- Multiple app servers
- Database read replicas
- Cache + CDN
- Microservices considered
- Cost: $1K-5K/month
10,000-100,000 users:
- Microservices architecture
- Database sharding (split data)
- Advanced caching strategies
- Dedicated infrastructure
- Cost: $10K-50K/month
100K+ users:
- Global distribution
- Advanced optimization
- Custom infrastructure
- Requires specialized engineers
- Cost: $100K+/month
Question to ask: "How many users do we expect at launch? In 1 year? In 3 years?" This determines architecture choice.
See: references/scalability.md
2. Architecture: Build vs Buy vs Wait
Three ways to solve technical needs:
Build (Custom code):
- Best fit for unique needs
- Slowest to market
- Most expensive
- Ongoing maintenance burden
- Example: Custom CRM for your specific workflow
Buy (Third-party service):
- Fast to market
- Lower cost initially
- Limited customization
- Integration overhead
- Example: Stripe for payments, Twilio for SMS
Wait (Use what you have):
- Cheapest option
- Familiar to team
- May not scale well
- Technical debt grows
- Example: Use existing analytics instead of building new one
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.
- 2mo ago First seen · 321 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 96afed9fb786
technical-basics is a skill published in the GitHub repository GiangGiangTran/ba-skills (8 stars, last pushed 8mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 1,984 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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