adr-documentation

adr-documentation is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from MadAppGang/claude-code. It costs 60 tokens per session (5,752 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A documentation practice for recording important software architecture decisions, the context behind them, the alternatives considered, and their consequences. These records preserve why a system evolved the way it did.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for creating decision logs, documenting trade-offs, recording rejected alternatives, and explaining architectural patterns to future contributors.
Why use it?
It prevents teams from repeatedly debating settled choices and losing technical knowledge when people or project conditions change. It also helps new developers understand existing design decisions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the dev plugin — 47 skills, 12 commands, 14 agents shipped together

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/madappgang/claude-code/adr-documentation
Any agent
npx skills add MadAppGang/claude-code --skill adr-documentation
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MadAppGang/claude-code

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install dev, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 47 skills, 12 commands, 14 agents.

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 adr-documentation

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/madappgang/claude-code/adr-documentation.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/madappgang/claude-code/adr-documentation)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/madappgang/claude-code/adr-documentation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/madappgang/claude-code/adr-documentation.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 60 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,752 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 $0.00060 $0.05752
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.02876
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.01150
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00575

Measured 2d ago against content hash fa624eb407ee, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

adr-documentation 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.

plugins/dev/skills/adr-documentation/SKILL.md · 930 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 930 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

ADR Documentation

Overview

What are ADRs?

Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) are lightweight documents that capture important architectural decisions along with their context and consequences. They serve as a historical record of why certain choices were made, helping teams avoid revisiting settled debates and providing context for future developers.

Key characteristics:

  • Immutable: Once accepted, ADRs are rarely modified (supersede instead)
  • Context-rich: Capture the environment and constraints at decision time
  • Outcome-focused: Document what was decided and why
  • Alternative-aware: Show what options were considered and rejected

Why Document Decisions?

Context Preservation:

  • Future team members understand why things are the way they are
  • Avoid "we've always done it this way" without knowing the reason
  • Preserve institutional knowledge across team changes

Onboarding:

  • New developers can read ADR history to understand system evolution
  • Reduces repetitive explanations of architectural choices
  • Provides learning path through project decisions

Avoiding Repeat Mistakes:

  • Document why certain approaches were rejected
  • Prevent re-proposing failed solutions
  • Learn from past trade-offs

Alignment:

  • Create shared understanding across team
  • Resolve disagreements with documented rationale
  • Enable asynchronous decision-making

When to Write an ADR

Write an ADR when:

  • Significant architectural choices: Microservices vs monolith, event-driven vs request/response
  • Technology selections: Database choice, framework adoption, language decisions
  • Pattern decisions: State management approach, authentication strategy, error handling patterns
  • Breaking changes: API redesigns, data model changes, migration strategies
  • Performance-critical decisions: Caching strategies, optimization approaches, scalability patterns
  • Security-related choices: Authentication methods, encryption strategies, access control models
  • Infrastructure decisions: Deployment strategy, hosting platform, CI/CD approach
  • Dependency selections: Major library choices, third-party service integrations

Read the full file on GitHub · 930 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. 2d ago First seen · 930 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A fa624eb407ee

Subscribe to this mod's changes

adr-documentation is a skill published in the GitHub repository MadAppGang/claude-code (279 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 5,752 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-09-03.

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