lock

A scope-setting guide that turns a vague coding request into a specific task with an output format and a test for completion.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before building or fixing something to define the exact object, action, result, expected real-world outcome, and smallest useful first artifact.
Why use it?
Unclear requests lead to over-broad work or stalled decisions. It makes missing information and temporary assumptions explicit.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/megaprompting/torque-loop/lock
Any agent
npx skills add Megaprompting/torque-loop --skill lock
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Megaprompting/torque-loop

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 67 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 743 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 $0.00067 $0.00743
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00371
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00149
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00074

Measured yesterday against content hash 286a97ca0af5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

lock 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 yesterday.

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/lock/SKILL.md · 74 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 74 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/ratchet:lock — scope lock

Ambiguity is where work goes to die. This command converts a wish into a target with edges. You do not begin work until the target is locked — but you also do not stall for missing information you can assume. Name the assumption and move.

Step 0 — Load state

ratchet status

Procedure

Interrogate the input until every field below has a concrete answer. Where the input is silent, infer the most reasonable value and mark it as an assumption.

  1. Literal object — the exact noun being operated on (this file, this prompt, this route, this dataset). Not a category. The specific thing.
  2. Operation — the single verb (build, fix, rank, migrate, decide, audit).
  3. Desired output shape — the concrete form of the result (a JSON file, a patch, a 3-row table, a 200-word spec). If you can't name the shape, the target isn't locked.
  4. Real outcome — what becomes true in the world when this is done. The reason, not the deliverable.
  5. Proof-of-done — the observable test that flips from fail to pass. One sentence, checkable by someone else.
  6. Smallest progress artifact — the tiniest thing you could produce in the next 20 minutes that is undeniably forward motion.
  7. Highest-information missing variable — the one unknown whose answer would change the plan most.
  8. Assumption if missing — the value you will adopt for that variable so work can start now, stated explicitly so it can be challenged later.

Output contract

OBJECT: <literal noun>
OPERATION: <single verb>
OUTPUT SHAPE: <concrete form>
REAL OUTCOME: <what becomes true>
PROOF-OF-DONE: <the checkable test>
SMALLEST ARTIFACT: <20-minute forward motion>
MISSING VARIABLE: <highest-information unknown>
WORKING ASSUMPTION: <adopted value + one-line justification>

Serialize

ratchet state set objective "<operation> <object> → <output shape>, proof: <proof-of-done>"
ratchet state set phase lock

Meter what follows

Read the full file on GitHub · 74 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. yesterday First seen · 74 lines · 67 tokens per session scan A 286a97ca0af5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

lock is a skill published in the GitHub repository Megaprompting/torque-loop (5 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 743 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 2026-08-31.

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