What is rct-methodology?

A method for turning technical specifications into step-by-step checklists that an AI coding agent can execute. RCT means Representation Contract Tests: checks that data keeps the right form when it crosses boundaries such as APIs, databases, or network messages.

It helps plan phased implementations, define tests for serialization, missing values, migrations, and versioning, and organize work into four verification gates.

It catches mismatched data formats and integration problems before developers build behavior on top of them.

How lukacf/meerkat configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to lukacf/meerkat. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lukacf/meerkat/main/.claude/skills/rct-methodology/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lukacf/meerkat

Made for: Claude Code.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lukacf/meerkat/rct-methodology/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lukacf/meerkat/rct-methodology)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lukacf/meerkat/rct-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lukacf/meerkat/rct-methodology/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lukacf/meerkat/rct-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lukacf/meerkat/rct-methodology.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 83 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 3,189 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 warn 7 Sept 2026

SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

medium Excessive Agency · line 8
Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.

Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00083	$0.03189
Opus 5.5	$0.00033	$0.01276
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00017	$0.00638
Haiku 4.5	$0.00008	$0.00319

Measured 8d ago against content hash e13e29c79d8e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

rct-methodology 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/luka_scaffold.py, scripts/render_checklist.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

.claude/skills/rct-methodology/SKILL.md · 330 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 330 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

RCT Methodology Skill

Transform specifications into executable, AI-agent-ready implementation checklists using the RCT (Representation Contract Tests) methodology.

When to Use This Skill

Creating implementation checklists from specifications or design documents
Planning phased implementations for complex systems
When user mentions "RCT", "representation contracts", "Gate 0", or "agent-ready checklist"
When converting a specification into tasks an AI agent can execute autonomously

Core Principle

Representations first. Behavior second. Internals last.

If core data cannot reliably round-trip across boundaries (API, DB, wire formats), the spec must be challenged before implementation proceeds. RCT prevents the two dominant risks in AI-assisted development:

Representation mismatch - wire/storage/tool formats don't behave as assumed
Integration hell - independently "perfect" components don't fit together

The Four RCT Gates (Methodology Gates)

Gate 0 - RCT MUST be green

Representation contracts must pass before any behavior implementation:

Serialization/encoding for enums/IDs/links
NULL vs NONE semantics
Migration/versioning behavior
Persistence round-trip (write → read → equals)
External contract shapes

If Gate 0 fails: Stop and revise. Do not proceed.

Gate 1 - E2E scenarios written (red OK)

Define E2E scenarios as black-box flows. Tests may be red but must:

Start reliably
Fail for expected reasons (not connection/boot errors)

Gate 2 - Integration choke-points written (red OK)

Integration tests validating cross-component wiring:

At least two subsystems exercised
At least one cross-component invariant asserted

Gate 3 - Unit tests as needed

Unit tests support integration tests, not replace them.

Strict Spec → Plan → Checklist Pipeline (REQUIRED)

You MUST follow the strict 2→3→4 pipeline. See references/strict_pipeline.md for the required structure, file locations, and rules.

Use the manual pipeline in this checkout. With Python 3 and PyYAML available, render a phases-based .rct/checklist.yaml matching references/checklist_template.md from the project root:

Read the full file on GitHub · 330 lines

Files

What ships with it

8 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.

8d ago Changed e13e29c79d8e
1mo ago Changed · +21 lines 85b6569b1622
1mo ago First seen · 309 lines · 83 tokens per session scan A ac4b524688be

Subscribe to this mod's changes

rct-methodology is a skill published in the GitHub repository lukacf/meerkat (23 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 83 tokens to every session and 3,189 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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