dry-audit

dry-audit is a skill for Claude Code from jonZlotnik/how-to-agent. It costs 54 tokens per session (589 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A review that finds the same piece of knowledge—such as a rule, setting, or data format—written in several places and helps keep one version as the source of truth.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before copying similar functionality, when one change requires edits in several files, or when reviewing schemas, settings, and documentation.
Why use it?
It helps prevent code, configuration, documentation, and test data from drifting out of sync.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the how-to-agent plugin — 27 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it before copying similar functionality, when one change requires edits in several files, or when reviewing schemas, settings, and documentation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/dry-audit
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 jonZlotnik/how-to-agent --skill dry-audit
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jonZlotnik/how-to-agent

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install how-to-agent, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 27 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 dry-audit

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/dry-audit/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/dry-audit)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/dry-audit"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/dry-audit/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 dry-audit

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/dry-audit"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/dry-audit.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 589 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00054 $0.00589
Opus 5 $0.00027 $0.00295
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00118
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00059

Measured 11d ago against content hash bc06381d0e12, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dry-audit 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.

skills/dry-audit/SKILL.md · 40 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 40 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

DRY Audit

DRY is about knowledge, not characters. Two functions that look alike but encode different rules aren't duplication. One business rule encoded in code + config + docs + a test fixture is. The audit hunts for knowledge with more than one home.

When to use

  • A change forces edits in 3+ files that "always have to move together"
  • You're about to copy a block "just to tweak it slightly"
  • Constants, enums, or strings appear in both code and configuration
  • A schema lives in code and is re-described in markdown and a test fixture

Protocol

  1. Pick a piece of knowledge — a rule, threshold, name, schema, format. Not a function — a fact.
  2. Find every place it lives. Grep widely: code, tests, configs, env vars, fixtures, docs, comments, migrations.
  3. Mark one as canonical. Usually the one closest to the runtime decision (code beats doc, generator beats copy).
  4. Derive the rest. Generate, import, reference, or delete. The non-canonical copies should disappear or become provably-equal references.
  5. Defend the boundary. Add a test, type, or build step that fails if drift returns.

Worked example

A maxRetries=5 constant appears in client.ts, in config.yaml, in a README example, and as the literal 5 in a test. Real duplication. Canonical home: config.yaml. Code reads from config. README example links to the same key. Test reads it from the loaded config. One fact, one home, four references.

Red flags (rationalizations to reject)

  • "These two functions just happen to look alike." — Then they'll drift. Either they encode the same rule (deduplicate) or different rules (rename to make the difference obvious).
  • "It's only two places." — It's two places that will diverge silently the first time one is updated.
  • "Documentation is supposed to repeat the code." — No: documentation should describe code, not encode the same facts in a form that can rot.

Composes with

  • [[orthogonality-check]] — duplicated knowledge is one of the strongest coupling signals; the audits often surface the same modules.
  • [[broken-windows]] — fresh duplication noticed early is a window. Patch it before it becomes the norm.
  • [[design-by-contract]] — when a duplicated rule becomes a contract, the contract enforces the single source of truth.

Read the full file on GitHub · 40 lines

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 · 40 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A bc06381d0e12

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dry-audit is a skill published in the GitHub repository jonZlotnik/how-to-agent (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 589 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.