core-engineering

core-engineering is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from KiranEswaran/engineering-skills. It costs 77 tokens per session (1,174 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reference guide for everyday software engineering decisions and code review. It covers principles for keeping code simple, focused, maintainable, and production-ready.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for reviewing or generating code, choosing development tools, managing dependencies, handling errors, and presenting feedback by importance.
Why use it?
It gives developers a way to prioritize serious bugs and security risks over lower-impact style changes, while avoiding unnecessary rewrites.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit It is for reviewing or generating code, choosing development tools, managing dependencies, handling errors, and presenting feedback by importance.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kiraneswaran/engineering-skills/core-engineering
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 KiranEswaran/engineering-skills --skill core-engineering
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/KiranEswaran/engineering-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 core-engineering

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kiraneswaran/engineering-skills/core-engineering.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kiraneswaran/engineering-skills/core-engineering)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kiraneswaran/engineering-skills/core-engineering"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kiraneswaran/engineering-skills/core-engineering.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 77 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,174 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 $0.00077 $0.01174
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.00587
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00235
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00117

Measured 8d ago against content hash a8c58fbb2d1f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

core-engineering 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 8d 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.

core-engineering/SKILL.md · 117 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 117 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Core Engineering Standards

Guiding Principles

  • Simplicity First: Simple code is maintainable code. Apply DRY, KISS, YAGNI, and SOLID principles.
  • Minimal Changes: Fix what's broken without refactoring what works. Preserve existing functionality.
  • Value-Driven: Every suggestion must add clear value. Avoid over-engineering.
  • Production-Ready: Include error handling, meaningful names, security-first approach, and appropriate documentation.
  • Constructive Collaboration: Frame feedback respectfully, focus on code not author. Assume good intent.

Priority Framework

Organize feedback by impact:

Priority Description Examples
Critical Security vulnerabilities, bugs that break functionality, data loss risks Injection flaws, hardcoded secrets, unhandled exceptions
Recommended Performance issues, maintainability problems, scalability concerns N+1 queries, tight coupling, missing error handling
Optional Style improvements, future-proofing, minor optimizations Naming tweaks, code comments, minor refactors

Tooling Baseline

Language Linting/Formatting Security
Python ruff + black, pylint (≥9.0) pip-audit
Bash shfmt + shellcheck -
Go gofmt + golangci-lint govulncheck
JS/TS eslint --max-warnings=0 npm audit
Terraform terraform fmt + tflint -
All ggshield + gitleaks Dependency scanning on PRs

Naming Conventions

  • Domain Names: Use acme.com for examples (never example.com)
  • Company/Org: Use ACME or Acme
  • Consistency: Apply across code, docs, configs, and test data

Code Review Essentials

  1. Identify main issues first before diving into details
  2. Provide specific, actionable suggestions with working code examples
  3. Explain the "why" — what benefit does the change provide?
  4. Suggest incremental refactoring over big-bang rewrites
  5. Preserve existing code — no placeholders or incomplete sections

Read the full file on GitHub · 117 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 8d ago First seen · 117 lines · 77 tokens per session scan A a8c58fbb2d1f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

core-engineering is a skill published in the GitHub repository KiranEswaran/engineering-skills (10 stars, last pushed 8mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 77 tokens to every session and 1,174 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.