empty-sentinel-instance

empty-sentinel-instance is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns. It costs 126 tokens per session (1,663 once invoked), scanned A, original, GPL-3.0.

A design pattern that provides one shared empty object for a model type, allowing code that stores it to avoid nullable values. Nullable means a value may be missing and must be checked before use.

In plain words
What is it for?
Defining safe default objects for models and deciding whether an empty instance is better than passing missing values through an application.
Why use it?
It can remove repeated missing-value checks when an object has a meaningful empty state, while also showing when that approach would add needless complexity.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the kotlin-footguns plugin — 148 skills 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/maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns/empty-sentinel-instance
Any agent
npx skills add maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns --skill empty-sentinel-instance
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install kotlin-footguns, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 148 skills.

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 empty-sentinel-instance

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns/empty-sentinel-instance.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns/empty-sentinel-instance)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns/empty-sentinel-instance"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns/empty-sentinel-instance.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 126 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,663 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin unknown 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 $0.00126 $0.01663
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.00831
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00333
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00166

Measured 2d ago against content hash 279b045259ab, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

empty-sentinel-instance 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.

skills/empty-sentinel-instance/SKILL.md · 133 lines

The source is not reproduced here

Licensed GPL-3.0

The repository is licensed GPL-3.0, which this catalogue does not treat as permission to reproduce the file. Read it at the source.

Read it on GitHub

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 · 133 lines · 126 tokens per session scan A 279b045259ab

Subscribe to this mod's changes

empty-sentinel-instance is a skill published in the GitHub repository maxrave-dev/kotlin-footguns (41 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed GPL-3.0. It adds 126 tokens to every session and 1,663 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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