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 jeffreytse/grimoire-core --skill apply-economy-of-forcegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jeffreytse/grimoire-coreWrote 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/jeffreytse/grimoire-core/apply-economy-of-force)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jeffreytse/grimoire-core/apply-economy-of-force"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jeffreytse/grimoire-core/apply-economy-of-force/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/jeffreytse/grimoire-core/apply-economy-of-force"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jeffreytse/grimoire-core/apply-economy-of-force.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 | $0.00049 | $0.02661 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00020 | $0.01064 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00010 | $0.00532 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00266 |
Grade A, and why
apply-economy-of-force 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 1mo 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 — 126 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Apply Economy of Force
Win in ways that preserve the value of what you are competing for, use no more force than the situation requires, and maintain reserves sufficient for follow-on engagements.
Why This Is Best Practice
Origin: Chapter 3 of The Art of War opens with one of Sun Tzu's least-quoted but most important principles: "In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, better to capture a regiment, a detachment, or a company entire than to destroy them." (Ch.3, Giles trans.) Chapter 2 reinforces the resource dimension: prolonged campaigns exhaust the victor alongside the defeated. The general who wins quickly and proportionately preserves the capacity to win again.
Adopted by: Economy of force is a named principle in every major military doctrine — US Army, NATO, and Prussian Clausewitzian tradition all formalise it. In business, Grove's Only the Paranoid Survive documents how Intel's response to the strategic inflection point of RISC processors preserved Intel's core while allowing the threat to play out, rather than committing maximum force to a response that might have destroyed the business model it was defending. Buffett's approach to competitive acquisition — preserving the management culture and autonomy of acquired companies — is economy of force applied to M&A.
Impact: Pyrrhic victories are common and decisive. A price war that wins market share but destroys industry margin is a pyrrhic victory — the victor leads a market no longer worth leading. An acquisition that extracts synergies but destroys the talent and culture that created the value is a pyrrhic victory. A negotiation that extracts maximum terms but destroys the supplier relationship is a pyrrhic victory. In each case, the win eliminates the future value it was meant to capture.
Why best: The natural competitive instinct is to win by as much as possible — overwhelming force, maximum pressure, complete defeat. Economy of force argues the opposite: use proportionate force, preserve the prize, retain capacity for follow-on action. A decisive but non-destructive victory positions you for the next campaign; a pyrrhic victory leaves you weakened at the moment of winning.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 126 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A ce21b5118c7d
apply-economy-of-force is a skill published in the GitHub repository jeffreytse/grimoire-core (5 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 2,661 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-03.
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