evaluating-trade-offs

evaluating-trade-offs is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus. It costs 35 tokens per session (2,142 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A method for turning an unclear pros-and-cons discussion into a structured comparison of options, costs, effects, risks, and a recommendation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Comparing approaches, estimating cost and impact ranges, testing decisions with pre-mortems, and deciding whether to continue or stop an initiative.
Why use it?
It makes trade-offs explicit, including opportunity cost and uncertainty, so a decision is easier to evaluate.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Comparing approaches, estimating cost and impact ranges, testing decisions with pre-mortems, and deciding whether to continue or stop an initiative.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/evaluating-trade-offs
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 liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus --skill evaluating-trade-offs
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus

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 evaluating-trade-offs

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/evaluating-trade-offs/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/evaluating-trade-offs)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/evaluating-trade-offs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/evaluating-trade-offs/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 evaluating-trade-offs

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/evaluating-trade-offs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/evaluating-trade-offs.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,142 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 $0.00035 $0.02142
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.01071
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00428
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00214

Measured 12d ago against content hash bd2dc48723f3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

evaluating-trade-offs 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 12d 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/evaluating-trade-offs/SKILL.md · 129 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 129 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Evaluating Trade-offs

Scope

Covers

  • Turning an ambiguous “pros/cons” debate into a decision-ready trade-off evaluation
  • Comparing options using all-in cost (not just dollars) and explicit opportunity cost
  • Using order-of-magnitude estimates (ranges + confidence) instead of false precision
  • Stress-testing decisions with thought experiments (pre-mortems, reversibility, “worse first” dips)
  • Avoiding sunk-cost traps with a clean stop/continue decision rule

When to use

  • “Help me evaluate this trade-off and recommend a path.”
  • “Create a pros/cons that actually leads to a decision.”
  • “Compare options with cost/impact ranges and key assumptions.”
  • “We’re debating speed vs quality—what’s the right trade and how do we manage the dip?”
  • “Should we keep investing in this project, or stop? (Sunk cost question.)”

When NOT to use

  • You need to clarify what problem you’re solving (use problem-definition).
  • You need a full cross-functional decision process with stakeholder alignment and governance (use running-decision-processes).
  • You’re prioritizing across many initiatives (use prioritizing-roadmap).
  • You’re evaluating a specific technology, vendor, or build-vs-buy for a tool/platform (use evaluating-new-technology).
  • You’re cutting scope to hit a date/timebox (use scoping-cutting).
  • You need to model feedback loops, second-order effects, or system dynamics (use systems-thinking).
  • The decision is personal/legal/HR/financial advice (escalate to qualified humans).

Inputs

Minimum required

  • The trade-off / decision statement (one sentence) and a decision date (or “by EOW”)
  • 2–4 options you’re choosing between (include “do nothing” if plausible)
  • Constraints + non-negotiables (budget, headcount, policy, deadlines, customer commitments)
  • What “good” means (success metrics + guardrails) and the time horizon you care about
  • What you already know (evidence) + biggest unknowns (assumptions that drive the choice)

Read the full file on GitHub · 129 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. 12d ago First seen · 129 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A bd2dc48723f3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

evaluating-trade-offs is a skill published in the GitHub repository liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus (52 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 2,142 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.

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