backlog-goal

backlog-goal is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mazen160/backlog. It costs 167 tokens per session (12,947 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A goal-management workflow built on the backlog command-line tool. It breaks work into tasks and checkpoints, records progress, and uses a separate reviewer to approve each checkpoint.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare a goal into backlog tasks or run those tasks one at a time with plans, comments, stored context, and review gates.
Why use it?
It gives long or complex coding tasks a visible work record and controlled sequence instead of leaving decisions and progress scattered across a chat.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions subagents; names the AskUserQuestion tool.

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/mazen160/backlog/backlog-goal
Any agent
npx skills add mazen160/backlog --skill backlog-goal
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mazen160/backlog

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 backlog-goal

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mazen160/backlog/backlog-goal.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mazen160/backlog/backlog-goal)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mazen160/backlog/backlog-goal"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mazen160/backlog/backlog-goal.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 167 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 12,947 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 5.1 $0.00167 $0.12947
Opus 5 $0.00084 $0.06474
Sonnet 5 $0.00033 $0.02589
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.01295

Measured 6d ago against content hash 756772eca2e7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

backlog-goal 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 6d 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/backlog-goal/SKILL.md · 1,025 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 1,025 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

backlog-goal

End-to-end goal pursuit, recorded in a backlog workspace. Every step the agent takes is observable through the backlog CLI: tasks for the work, plans for the how, structured-receipt comments for the audit trail, memory for the brief, and a Judge sub-agent that gates every checkpoint.

Requires: the backlog skill

This skill is a thin orchestrator on top of the backlog CLI. Before doing anything in PREP or RUN, load the backlog skill (skills/backlog/skill.md in this repo, also exposed as the backlog skill in the user's available-skills list). That skill is the canonical reference for:

  • every CLI flag (--profile, --as, --json, --db, --quiet)
  • the full surface for project, task, plan, comment, label, memory, doc, attachment, import-findings, export, activity
  • ID formats (TASK-N, bare integer, full ULID)
  • JSON response shapes for parsing
  • enum values for type, status, priority, actor.kind
  • DB resolution order and profile semantics
  • MCP tool names and signatures (if the goal is being executed via MCP rather than the CLI)

If you find yourself guessing a flag name or a JSON field shape, stop and re-read skills/backlog/skill.md. This skill (backlog-goal) assumes you already know how to drive the CLI; it does not re-document it. The "Quick command reference" section at the bottom is a cheat sheet, not a replacement for the full skill.

When operating in this repo, also respect the conventions noted in docs/CLAUDE/MEMORY.md: always pass --profile default (because go test can leave an e2etest profile registered), always attribute writes to --as ai:claude-opus-4-7 (or the current model's exact ID), and remember the binary is ./backlog at the repo root after make build.

Why two modes

The single most common failure of a "set a goal" loop is to skip discovery and start coding. This skill enforces a hard wall: PREP asks questions, classifies the goal, and seeds the board, then STOPS. RUN executes the board the user just confirmed. The user must explicitly invoke RUN — prep never starts work. This invocation boundary is borrowed from GoalBuddy and is non-negotiable: the questions are the work.

Read the full file on GitHub · 1,025 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. 6d ago First seen · 1,025 lines · 167 tokens per session scan A 756772eca2e7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

backlog-goal is a skill published in the GitHub repository mazen160/backlog (15 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 167 tokens to every session and 12,947 once invoked, about $0.0008 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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