codebase-design

A vocabulary and set of principles for designing modules with small interfaces and substantial behavior behind them. A module can be a function, class, package, or larger part of a codebase.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when designing or restructuring modules, choosing where behavior belongs, improving testability, or explaining interfaces and implementations consistently.
Why use it?
It helps place behavior at clear seams, reduce what callers need to know, and make code easier to test and navigate.

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/lootlog/monorepo/codebase-design
Any agent
npx skills add lootlog/monorepo --skill codebase-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lootlog/monorepo

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 57 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,351 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00057 $0.01351
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00675
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00270
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00135

Measured 2d ago against content hash a8d50abac5a4, 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to codebase-design — 26 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/codebase-design/SKILL.md · 115 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Codebase Design

Design deep modules: a lot of behaviour behind a small interface, placed at a clean seam, testable through that interface. Use this language and these principles wherever code is being designed or restructured. The aim is leverage for callers, locality for maintainers, and testability for everyone.

Glossary

Use these terms exactly — don't substitute "component," "service," "API," or "boundary." Consistent language is the whole point.

Module — anything with an interface and an implementation. Deliberately scale-agnostic: a function, class, package, or tier-spanning slice. Avoid: unit, component, service.

Interface — everything a caller must know to use the module correctly: the type signature, but also invariants, ordering constraints, error modes, required configuration, and performance characteristics. Avoid: API, signature (too narrow — they refer only to the type-level surface).

Implementation — what's inside a module, its body of code. Distinct from Adapter: a thing can be a small adapter with a large implementation (a Postgres repo) or a large adapter with a small implementation (an in-memory fake). Reach for "adapter" when the seam is the topic; "implementation" otherwise.

Depth — leverage at the interface: the amount of behaviour a caller (or test) can exercise per unit of interface they have to learn. A module is deep when a large amount of behaviour sits behind a small interface, shallow when the interface is nearly as complex as the implementation.

Seam (Michael Feathers) — a place where you can alter behaviour without editing in that place; the location at which a module's interface lives. Where to put the seam is its own design decision, distinct from what goes behind it. Avoid: boundary (overloaded with DDD's bounded context).

Adapter — a concrete thing that satisfies an interface at a seam. Describes role (what slot it fills), not substance (what's inside).

Leverage — what callers get from depth: more capability per unit of interface they learn. One implementation pays back across N call sites and M tests.

Read the full file on GitHub · 115 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 · 115 lines · 57 tokens per session scan A a8d50abac5a4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

codebase-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository lootlog/monorepo (10 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 57 tokens to every session and 1,351 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to codebase-design, differing in 26 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

v8-jit

V8 JIT optimization patterns for writing high-performance JavaScript in Next.js server internals. Use when writing or reviewing hot-path code in app-render, stream-utils, routing, caching, or any per-request code path. Covers hidden classes / shapes, monomorphic call sites, inline caches, megamorphic deopt, closure…

vercel/next.js · 88 tokens

dce-edge

DCE-safe require() patterns and edge runtime constraints. Use when writing conditional require() calls, guarding Node-only imports (node:stream etc.), or editing define-env-plugin.ts / app-render / stream-utils for edge builds. Covers if/else branching for webpack DCE, TypeScript definite assignment, the NEXTRUNTIME…

vercel/next.js · 84 tokens

migrate-radix-to-base

Migrates React projects and components from Radix UI to Base UI. Use when asked to migrate from radix, move to base-ui, convert radix primitives, or switch a shadcn project's base library. Handles single components ("migrate accordion") and whole projects.

shadcn-ui/ui · 61 tokens

chakra-ui-builder

Build responsive, accessible UI components and layouts using Chakra UI v3, install or configure Chakra UI in new and existing projects, and design scalable themes using tokens, semantic tokens, recipes, and slot recipes. Use this skill whenever a user asks to build, create, or generate any UI component, page, form…

chakra-ui/chakra-ui · 214 tokens

e2e-write-visual-test

Use when writing a Playwright visual regression (screenshot comparison) test, tagging a test @visual, generating or updating baseline screenshots, running visual tests locally, or debugging a failing screenshot comparison in CI.

payloadcms/payload · 50 tokens

compiler-port

Port a compiler pass from TypeScript to Rust. Gathers context, plans the port, implements in a subagent with test-fix loop, then reviews.

react/react · 35 tokens