What is pipeline-architecture?

A guide to designing Buildkite automation pipelines, which are workflows that build and test software. It covers dependency graphs, parallel jobs, matrix builds, retries, manual pauses, and pipelines that create their steps at run time.

Use it when writing or reviewing a Buildkite pipeline, choosing job dependencies, generating steps dynamically, or configuring parallel, conditional, retried, and manually controlled jobs.

It helps keep pipeline configuration small and makes job order and conditions explicit. This is useful in a monorepo, where only the parts affected by a change may need to run.

pipeline-architecture — Skill for Claude Code by hasithaishere

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 hasithaishere/buildkite-developer-toolkit --skill pipeline-architecture

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hasithaishere/buildkite-developer-toolkit

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install buildkite-developer-toolkit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hasithaishere/buildkite-developer-toolkit/pipeline-architecture.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/hasithaishere/buildkite-developer-toolkit/pipeline-architecture)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hasithaishere/buildkite-developer-toolkit/pipeline-architecture"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hasithaishere/buildkite-developer-toolkit/pipeline-architecture.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 114 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,302 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00114	$0.01302
Opus 5	$0.00057	$0.00651
Sonnet 5	$0.00023	$0.00260
Haiku 4.5	$0.00011	$0.00130

Measured 6d ago against content hash 91c9143f5a94, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pipeline-architecture 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 6d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (templates/dynamic-pipeline.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/pipeline-architecture/SKILL.md · 98 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 98 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Buildkite pipeline architecture

You are a principal platform engineer designing scalable, secure Buildkite pipelines. Favor configuration-as-code and dynamic uploads over giant static files, and an explicit DAG over implicit ordering.

Verify version-sensitive syntax via WebSearch on buildkite.com:

Defining steps: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/configure/defining-steps

Dynamic pipelines: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/configure/dynamic-pipelines

depends_on: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/configure/depends-on

Matrix: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/build-matrix

Command step: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/configure/step-types/command-step

pipeline CLI: https://buildkite.com/docs/agent/cli/reference/pipeline

Core principles

Lean entrypoint, dynamic upload. Keep .buildkite/pipeline.yml tiny; let it generate and upload the real steps. This keeps logic in code and lets you compute steps from the diff (monorepos), branch, or env.
```
steps:
  - label: ":pipeline: upload"
    command: ".buildkite/pipeline.sh | buildkite-agent pipeline upload"
```
The script prints YAML/JSON to stdout; pipeline upload (no file arg) reads stdin. For static fragments, buildkite-agent pipeline upload path/to.yml.
Explicit DAG with key + depends_on. Give steps a stable key; depend on them by key. This parallelizes safely and documents intent. Avoid relying on top-to-bottom order or unnecessary wait barriers.
- depends_on: "build" or a list. Use allow_dependency_failure: true to run even if a dependency failed; pair with soft_fail thoughtfully.
Target agents explicitly. Put agents: { queue: "..." } on steps so work lands on the right cluster/queue. Don't assume a default queue.
Fail loud, retry smart. Use retry.automatic for known-transient exit codes only; retry.manual for human-gated reruns. Use soft_fail for non-blocking checks, not to paper over real failures.
Validate before you ship. buildkite-agent pipeline upload --dry-run parses and renders the pipeline without uploading. See reference/validation.md.

Read the full file on GitHub · 98 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

6d ago First seen · 98 lines · 114 tokens per session scan A 91c9143f5a94

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pipeline-architecture is a skill published in the GitHub repository hasithaishere/buildkite-developer-toolkit (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 114 tokens to every session and 1,302 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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