pick-for-the-problem

pick-for-the-problem is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from melodic-software/claude-code-plugins. It costs 138 tokens per session (1,524 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A decision review aid that checks whether a tool, library, framework, language, or approach fits the actual problem.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when selecting an implementation approach or deciding whether to adopt a dependency.
Why use it?
It helps prevent technology choices based only on habit, availability, existing usage, or assumptions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Installs and runs on its own, but its text points at files inside its plugin — anything it tells you to read at a ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} path is only there once the plugin is installed. Installing the plugin gets both.

Part of the discipline plugin — 16 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/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/pick-for-the-problem
Any agent
npx skills add melodic-software/claude-code-plugins --skill pick-for-the-problem
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install discipline, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 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 pick-for-the-problem

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/pick-for-the-problem.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/pick-for-the-problem)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/pick-for-the-problem"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/pick-for-the-problem.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 138 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,524 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 $0.00138 $0.01524
Opus 5 $0.00069 $0.00762
Sonnet 5 $0.00028 $0.00305
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00152

Measured yesterday against content hash 1b2890cef832, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pick-for-the-problem 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.

plugins/discipline/skills/pick-for-the-problem/SKILL.md · 125 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 125 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Pick for the problem

A drift corrector for selection discipline: the tool must fit the problem, not the reflex. The method, re-anchor, audit the work in flight, correct forward, report, and the tone that firing this is not an accusation, lives in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/context/re-anchor-audit-correct.md. Read it; this file adds only what is specific to selecting a tool, library, framework, language, or approach.

The discipline this re-anchors

A selection is a design decision, not a reflex. Resolve the source of truth per the method doc's ladder: if the consuming project states a technology-selection or dependency-adoption rule in its own CLAUDE.md / .claude/rules/, re-anchor THAT. Otherwise re-anchor this portable baseline.

The four selection sins, an unexamined choice usually traces to one:

  • Habit. "I always use X." The reach is muscle memory, not analysis.
  • Availability. "X is already at hand." Convenience picked it, not fit.
  • Incumbency. "the repo already uses X, so new work assumes X." Current state is treated as the requirement.
  • Preconception. "I came in believing X is the answer." The verdict preceded the problem.

The discipline that replaces them:

  • Define the actual problem first. Name what is being solved, the real requirements, before any candidate is on the table. Do not let the first solution shape decide the problem.
  • Survey the field. More than one candidate, judged against the stated requirements and the plausible future ones (variables that could shift and turn a choice into future pain).
  • Walk the preference ladder, an earlier rung wins when it covers the requirements and the plausible future requirements:
    1. Native. What the platform, language, or framework already provides: no new dependency, no new coupling.
    2. Official / authoritative, the first-party or canonical option when native falls short.
    3. Vetted third-party. Only when the rungs above genuinely miss, and only if it is well-maintained, well-known, safe, and secure.
  • Every dependency is a coupling point. Weigh, at adoption time, the cost this coupling can impose later: abandonment, a pricing pivot, a license change, security posture, and exit cost. A dependency adopted without that weighing is an unpriced liability.
  • Building what already exists is a finding. Re-implementing a solved, well-served problem (native or vetted) is a selection error in the other direction. Name it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 125 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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.

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 · 125 lines · 138 tokens per session scan A 1b2890cef832

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pick-for-the-problem is a skill published in the GitHub repository melodic-software/claude-code-plugins (15 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 138 tokens to every session and 1,524 once invoked, about $0.0007 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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