gao-cost

gao-cost is a skill for Claude Code from jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs. It costs 272 tokens per session (3,954 once invoked), scanned A, original, no licence file.

A reference guide for estimating the cost of programs, based on the U.S. Government Accountability Office Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide. It describes reliable estimates, 18 recommended practices, and a 12-step estimating process.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan or review program cost estimates, define the technical baseline and work breakdown structure, assess risks, and check whether an estimate follows the guide's practices.
Why use it?
It helps replace unsupported cost guesses with estimates that are complete, documented, accurate, and credible.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the jgs-se-knowledge-packs plugin — 65 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to plan or review program cost estimates, define the technical baseline and work breakdown structure, assess risks, and check whether an estimate follows the guide's practices.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs/gao-cost
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 jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs --skill gao-cost
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install jgs-se-knowledge-packs, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 65 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.

agentmods badge for gao-cost

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs/gao-cost/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs/gao-cost)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs/gao-cost"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs/gao-cost/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for gao-cost

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs/gao-cost"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs/gao-cost.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 272 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,954 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 unknown 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 5.1 $0.00272 $0.03954
Opus 5 $0.00136 $0.01977
Sonnet 5 $0.00054 $0.00791
Haiku 4.5 $0.00027 $0.00395

Measured 11d ago against content hash a446bb46063c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

gao-cost 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 11d 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.

packs/gao-cost/SKILL.md · 155 lines

The source is not reproduced here

A licence we could not identify

The repository carries a LICENSE file, but it is custom or dual enough that GitHub cannot name it and neither can this catalogue. Unknown terms are not permission, so the body is not copied here. Read the licence at the source and decide for yourself.

Read it on GitHub

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. 11d ago First seen · 155 lines · 272 tokens per session scan A a446bb46063c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

gao-cost is a skill published in the GitHub repository jgsystemsconsulting/jgs-se-knowledge-packs (5 stars, last pushed 21d ago), with no licence file. It adds 272 tokens to every session and 3,954 once invoked, about $0.0014 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.