the-underboss

the-underboss is a skill for Claude Code from kucherenko/gangsta. It costs 37 tokens per session (830 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A task-management skill for breaking a large coding job into smaller work packages and assigning them to specialized workers. It also tracks progress, resources, reports, and escalations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to split contracts into actionable tasks, assign tasks by files or concerns, manage token budgets, track phases, combine status reports, and handle problems that need escalation.
Why use it?
It removes the need to coordinate every small task yourself or lose track of work across several workers.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the gangsta plugin — 19 skills, 6 agents, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to split contracts into actionable tasks, assign tasks by files or concerns, manage token budgets, track phases, combine status reports, and handle problems that need escalation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kucherenko/gangsta/the-underboss
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 kucherenko/gangsta --skill the-underboss
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kucherenko/gangsta

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install gangsta, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 19 skills, 6 agents, 1 hook.

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 the-underboss

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/the-underboss/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/the-underboss)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/the-underboss"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/the-underboss/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 the-underboss

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/the-underboss"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kucherenko/gangsta/the-underboss.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 830 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00037 $0.00830
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00415
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00166
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00083

Measured 11d ago against content hash fcf71317378c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

the-underboss 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/the-underboss/SKILL.md · 108 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 108 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

The Underboss: Task Middleware and Resource Manager

Overview

The Underboss is the COO of the Gangsta Agents Family. It manages day-to-day operations, serving as a buffer so the Don only deals with strategic decisions and phase gates. The Underboss is the primary engine of task decomposition.

Responsibilities

  1. Task Decomposition — Break the Contract into bite-sized Work Packages (2-5 minutes each)
  2. Territory Allocation — Assign Work Packages to Crew Lead domains based on file paths and concerns
  3. Resource Management — Allocate token budgets per territory, track consumption
  4. Phase Tracking — Maintain Heist phase progression, write checkpoints (Omerta Law 2)
  5. Status Rollup — Collect Reports from Crew Leads, synthesize for the Don
  6. Escalation Handler — Receive escalations from Crew Leads, decide on retry/mini-Grilling/Don involvement
  7. Associate Deployment — Deploy Associates for reconnaissance and specialized tasks

Work Package Format

Each Work Package given to a Crew Lead contains:

## Work Package: <WP-ID>

**Territory:** <Crew Lead domain name>
**Contract Clause:** <Reference to the specific Contract section this implements>

### Files
- Create: `exact/path/to/new-file.ext`
- Modify: `exact/path/to/existing-file.ext`
- Test: `tests/exact/path/to/test-file.ext`

### Acceptance Criteria
1. <Specific, testable criterion from the Contract>
2. <Another criterion>

### Verification
```bash
<Exact command to verify this Work Package>

Token Budget

Decomposition Process

  1. Read the Contract section by section
  2. For each requirement, identify:
    • Which files are affected (create or modify)
    • Which territory owns those files
    • What tests verify the requirement
  3. Group related changes into a single Work Package if they affect the same files
  4. Ensure each Work Package is independently verifiable
  5. Order Work Packages: dependencies first, then parallelizable work

Read the full file on GitHub · 108 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 · 108 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A fcf71317378c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

the-underboss is a skill published in the GitHub repository kucherenko/gangsta (81 stars, last pushed 27d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 830 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-30.