reason-dont-recite

reason-dont-recite is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from melodic-software/claude-code-plugins. It costs 183 tokens per session (1,320 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A review aid that questions inherited project choices instead of treating existing practice as proof that those choices are right.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to re-examine conventions, structures, rules, and processes from their underlying purpose.
Why use it?
It helps reveal decisions that persist only because they were already in the codebase or documentation.

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/reason-dont-recite
Any agent
npx skills add melodic-software/claude-code-plugins --skill reason-dont-recite
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 reason-dont-recite

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/reason-dont-recite.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/reason-dont-recite)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/reason-dont-recite"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/reason-dont-recite.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 183 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,320 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 $0.00183 $0.01320
Opus 5 $0.00092 $0.00660
Sonnet 5 $0.00037 $0.00264
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00132

Measured yesterday against content hash 7d19e7948054, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

reason-dont-recite 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/reason-dont-recite/SKILL.md · 103 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 103 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Reason, don't recite

A drift corrector for incumbency discipline. 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 interrogating inherited content.

The discipline this re-anchors

Inherited content, a repo's docs, conventions, structure, processes, is evidence of what is, never a self-justifying argument for what should be. Resolve the source of truth per the method doc's ladder: if the consuming project states an incumbency / first-principles rule in its own CLAUDE.md / .claude/rules/, re-anchor THAT. Otherwise re-anchor this portable baseline:

  • Precedent describes, it does not justify. Existing structure, coupling, "how it's always been done", and "I don't know why, it just is" describe the current state; none is an argument that the state is correct.
  • Descriptive-only support earns a challenge. A rule, boundary, or process whose only backing is that it already exists gets re-derived from first principles. State the actual purpose, then test whether the incumbent form serves it, not obeyed on sight.
  • A live rationale is different from inertia. A convention someone can justify on its merits is followed; one coasting on incumbency is interrogated. Separate the two before acting.
  • Absence today is not out of scope. Do not dismiss a concern merely because the thing it depends on does not exist yet; judge it on its merits.

This is a distinct axis from /discipline:do-your-research. That skill acquires external evidence you LACK; this one questions internal evidence you INHERITED and took on faith. Firing it is a re-anchor, not an accusation, a gentle "should we actually be doing it this way" is a first-class use, and the audit may find every inherited choice is well justified.

Read the full file on GitHub · 103 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 · 103 lines · 183 tokens per session scan A 7d19e7948054

Subscribe to this mod's changes

reason-dont-recite is a skill published in the GitHub repository melodic-software/claude-code-plugins (14 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 183 tokens to every session and 1,320 once invoked, about $0.0009 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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