ralphctl-abstraction-first

ralphctl-abstraction-first is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from lukas-grigis/ralphctl. It costs 49 tokens per session (688 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A planning guide that defines the main entities, boundaries, and connection points of a software change before code, tasks, or acceptance criteria are written. An entity is a distinct thing in the system, while a boundary separates responsibilities.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when refining requirements, planning work across existing components, or implementing a change that touches several parts of a codebase.
Why use it?
It prevents a change from becoming one large, tangled piece of work with duplicated logic and unclear ownership. Starting with the shape of the change makes later planning and review more focused.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it when refining requirements, planning work across existing components, or implementing a change that touches several parts of a codebase.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/lukas-grigis/ralphctl/ralphctl-abstraction-first
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 lukas-grigis/ralphctl --skill ralphctl-abstraction-first
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lukas-grigis/ralphctl

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 ralphctl-abstraction-first

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lukas-grigis/ralphctl/ralphctl-abstraction-first.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lukas-grigis/ralphctl/ralphctl-abstraction-first)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lukas-grigis/ralphctl/ralphctl-abstraction-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lukas-grigis/ralphctl/ralphctl-abstraction-first.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 688 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 $0.00049 $0.00688
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00344
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00138
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00069

Measured 8d ago against content hash 6305add51f72, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ralphctl-abstraction-first 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.

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.

src/integration/ai/skills/bundled/ralphctl-abstraction-first/SKILL.md · 49 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 49 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Abstraction-First

Concept

from SPDD (Zhang & Xia, martinfowler.com) — "Abstraction-First". Adapted for ralphctl's three phases.

The shape of the change comes before the words that describe it. Name the entities, the boundaries, and the seams the change touches first; the criteria, tasks, or code that follow are then arguments about that shape, not freeform prose. Skip this and the output reads as a "big blob" — duplicated logic, blurred responsibilities, work that has to be reviewed wholesale rather than incrementally.

When this applies

  • Refine — name the entities and the boundary of the change before listing acceptance criteria. "Adds a UserBilling aggregate that exposes cancelSubscription" is the right altitude. "The cancel button must turn red" is too specific to be the spec.
  • Plan — sketch which existing components the change extends, which new ones it introduces, and the seams between them, before splitting into tasks. The task list is then the decomposition of a known shape, not a guess about one.
  • Execute — re-read the task's verification criteria and the surrounding code's existing pattern before opening an editor. The "abstraction" at this altitude is the contract the task already declared; matching it is the job.

What to do

  1. Name the entities. Real-world nouns the change talks about — domain objects, aggregates, modules, external systems. If you cannot name three of them, the change is either trivial or under-specified.
  2. Draw the boundary. Which files / directories / packages are in scope? Which are explicitly out? An ambiguous boundary is the same problem as an ambiguous criterion — it lets later work drift.
  3. Identify the seam. Where does the new behaviour meet the existing system? An interface, a port, a route, a CLI command, a database table. The seam is where regressions hide; call it out by name.
  4. Only then describe behaviour. Acceptance criteria, task steps, code — all of these are downstream of the shape. Writing them first is what produces the "big blob".

Read the full file on GitHub · 49 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. 8d ago First seen · 49 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 6305add51f72

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ralphctl-abstraction-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository lukas-grigis/ralphctl (23 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 688 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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