boring-stack

A tool-selection framework that starts with free or do-it-yourself options and moves to more involved choices only when the simpler option has a documented limit.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for choosing or changing tools for functions such as customer management, email, scheduling, websites, finances, storage, analytics, design, communication, and automation.
Why use it?
It helps prevent unnecessary subscriptions and tool switching when a basic option still meets the need.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/jaredlangleycc/nightshift-os/boring-stack
Any agent
npx skills add jaredlangleycc/nightshift-os --skill boring-stack
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jaredlangleycc/nightshift-os

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 129 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,748 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 $0.00129 $0.03748
Opus 5 $0.00064 $0.01874
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00750
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00375

Measured 2d ago against content hash 4437d8676cbb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

boring-stack 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 2d 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/posture/boring-stack/SKILL.md · 341 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 341 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Boring Stack

Boring tools win. The user's job is shipping the offer, talking to customers, and going home for dinner. The tools should disappear into the background.

The boring-stack ladder is a 4-rung framework that picks the lowest-friction tool for the function. Climb only when the rung below breaks at a documented limitation.

When this skill triggers

Fire whenever:

  • The user asks "what should I use for [function]"
  • The user proposes adding a tool to their stack
  • The user proposes switching from one tool to another
  • The user wants to know the "best" tool for anything
  • free-first-checker cleared a climb and needs a destination
  • customize-from-assessment is building the initial stack
  • The user's stated monthly stack cost exceeds their max_tool_spend_monthly

The boring-stack ladder

Four rungs. Each rung has a specific role and a specific test to climb to the next.

Rung 0: Free tier or DIY

The default. Free tools, hand-coded artifacts, or genuinely free DIY. No cost beyond setup time.

Test to climb: the free path has been tested for at least 14 days at meaningful volume, the break point has been named specifically, and free-first-checker has logged the test.

Rung 1: Sub-$20/mo paid

Lightweight paid tier that fixes a specific limitation in the free path. Single subscription, low commitment, easy to cancel.

Test to climb: the user has used Rung 1 for at least 30 days, the limitation that justified Rung 1 still applies, AND a new specific limitation has emerged that Rung 1 cannot fix.

Rung 2: $20 to $50/mo paid

Mid-tier paid product. Fixes more substantial limitations and often includes integrations, automations, or higher caps.

Test to climb: the user has used Rung 2 for at least 60 days, the business has crossed a revenue threshold (typically $5K MRR), and Rung 2 has a documented hard limit that Rung 3 fixes.

Rung 3: Custom build or $50+/mo paid

Build it (custom code, self-hosted) or pay for the premium SKU. Reserved for genuine scale problems or functions where speed matters more than savings.

Read the full file on GitHub · 341 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 341 lines · 129 tokens per session scan A 4437d8676cbb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

boring-stack is a skill published in the GitHub repository jaredlangleycc/nightshift-os (3 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 129 tokens to every session and 3,748 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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