codebase-design

Guidance for designing deep modules: code units that hide substantial behavior behind a small, clear interface.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when choosing module interfaces, deciding where code should connect, adding adapters, or evaluating whether an interface earns its complexity.
Why use it?
It helps prevent thin wrapper modules and keeps complexity in one place, making callers and tests easier to work with.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/loerei/chronicle-mcp/codebase-design
Any agent
npx skills add loerei/chronicle-mcp --skill codebase-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/loerei/chronicle-mcp

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 19 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 807 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00019 $0.00807
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00404
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00161
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00081

Measured 2d ago against content hash 85da5a0c201a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

codebase-design 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 2d 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.

.agents/skills/codebase-design/SKILL.md · 84 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 84 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Codebase Design

Design deep modules: maximize behavior behind a small interface, placed at a clean seam, testable through that interface.

Directives

  1. Strict Terminology: MUST use glossary terms (module, interface, depth, seam, adapter, leverage, locality); NEVER substitute component, service, API, boundary.
  2. Depth as Leverage: Depth is measured by leverage at the interface (behavior per unit of learned surface), NOT line-of-code ratios.
  3. The Deletion Test: If deleting a module makes complexity vanish, it was a shallow pass-through; if complexity reappears across callers, it was earning its keep.
  4. Interface as Test Surface: Callers and tests MUST cross the same seam. If tests must reach past the interface, the module is incorrectly shaped.
  5. Seam Justification: 1 adapter = hypothetical seam (unnecessary indirection); 2+ adapters = real seam (e.g., production + test stand-in).

Glossary

  • Module: Anything with an interface and an implementation (function, class, package, slice). Avoid: unit, component, service.
  • Interface: Everything a caller must know to use the module correctly (types, invariants, ordering, errors, performance). Avoid: API, signature.
  • Implementation: Internal body of code. Distinct from Adapter (role at seam).
  • Depth: Leverage at interface. Deep = small interface + large behavior; Shallow = large interface + thin pass-through.
  • Seam: Location where an interface lives and behavior can be altered without editing callers. Avoid: boundary.
  • Adapter: Concrete implementation satisfying an interface at a seam.
  • Leverage: Capability gain per unit of interface learned (1 implementation serves N callers and M tests).
  • Locality: Concentration of change, bugs, and verification in one place.

Deep vs. Shallow Modules

┌─────────────────────┐       ┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│   Small Interface   │       │       Large Interface           │
├─────────────────────┤       ├─────────────────────────────────┤
│                     │       │  Thin Implementation (Avoid)    │
│  Deep Implementation│       └─────────────────────────────────┘
│                     │
└─────────────────────┘

Read the full file on GitHub · 84 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. 2d ago First seen · 84 lines · 19 tokens per session scan A 85da5a0c201a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

codebase-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository loerei/chronicle-mcp (0 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 19 tokens to every session and 807 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

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