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.
npx agentmods add skills/maludb/salvage-project/simplicity-guidenpx skills add maludb/salvage-project --skill simplicity-guidegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/maludb/salvage-projectWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/maludb/salvage-project/simplicity-guide)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/maludb/salvage-project/simplicity-guide"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/maludb/salvage-project/simplicity-guide.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00047 | $0.00375 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00023 | $0.00187 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00009 | $0.00075 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00038 |
Grade A, and why
simplicity-guide 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 5d 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.
What it actually says
Simplicity Guide
The spine of opinions behind salvage. For every technical choice, start at the lowest rung of its ladder and climb ONLY when a written requirement forces it.
The ladders
Each fork has a reference file under references/, structured identically:
one ## rung section per rung, each with Use when, Climb when, Cost,
and a Rationale template.
- Data store →
references/data-store.md(flat files → SQLite → Postgres) - Frontend →
references/frontend.md(server-rendered → HTMX → SPA) - Realtime →
references/realtime.md(manual refresh → polling → SSE → websockets) - Auth →
references/auth.md(framework sessions → library → third-party) - Jobs →
references/jobs.md(inline → cron → queue) - Deploy →
references/deploy.md(one box → containers → orchestration)
How to consult during the interview
For each relevant fork:
- Open the matching reference.
- Find the lowest rung whose Use when the project satisfies.
- Check the Climb when — climb one rung only if a stated requirement matches it. Never climb "to be safe."
- Weigh Cost against the developer's maintenance ceiling (from Stage 1).
- Record the decision in
tech-stack.mdby filling the rung's Rationale template, citing the rung (e.g.data-store.md#sqlite).
What ships with it
6 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.
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.
- 5d ago First seen · 34 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A d3e97e363b8f
simplicity-guide is a skill published in the GitHub repository maludb/salvage-project (29 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 375 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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