sketching

sketching is a skill for Claude Code from MereWhiplash/engram-cogitator. It costs 38 tokens per session (723 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A lightweight planning process for medium-sized changes that affect one contained component without changing the system's architecture, data model, or programming interface.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to research the relevant project area, write a short combined design-and-plan note, get one confirmation, then implement the change with test-driven development and verification.
Why use it?
It records the key design decision while avoiding the heavier documentation process used for larger changes.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the cogitation plugin — 20 skills, 1 command, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to research the relevant project area, write a short combined design-and-plan note, get one confirmation, then implement the change with test-driven development and verification.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/merewhiplash/engram-cogitator/sketching
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.

Any agent
npx skills add MereWhiplash/engram-cogitator --skill sketching
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MereWhiplash/engram-cogitator

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install cogitation, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 20 skills, 1 command, 1 hook.

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 sketching

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/merewhiplash/engram-cogitator/sketching/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/merewhiplash/engram-cogitator/sketching)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/merewhiplash/engram-cogitator/sketching"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/merewhiplash/engram-cogitator/sketching/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for sketching

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/merewhiplash/engram-cogitator/sketching"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/merewhiplash/engram-cogitator/sketching.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 723 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00038 $0.00723
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00362
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00145
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00072

Measured 12d ago against content hash eef4b0ee7af4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

sketching 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 12d 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.

cogitation/skills/sketching/SKILL.md · 93 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 93 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Sketching

The MEDIUM path: all of the discipline of the full flow, a fraction of the ceremony. One half-page combo doc replaces the design doc + plan pair; the execution rigor (TDD, verification, inline review) is identical.

Announce: "I'm using the sketching skill — MEDIUM-sized work, combo doc instead of full design + plan."

When This Fits

New behavior that is contained: one component, reversible-ish, no architecture/data-model/API-surface change. Too big for straight @tdd (there are real decisions to record), too small for brainstormingwriting-plans (two ceremony docs would outweigh the change).

The Flow

Quick Recon → Combo Doc → One Confirmation → Execute (TDD) → Persist

Step 1: Quick Recon

Lightweight — not the full brainstorming recon:

ec_search:
  query: [feature area]

If graphify is enabled in .cogitation/config.json, one structural query on the touched area. Skip anything that doesn't sharpen the sketch.

Step 2: The Combo Doc

Write docs/sketches/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md, capped at half-page:

# <Topic>

**What/Why:** 2–3 sentences — the change and what it buys.
**Approach:** the chosen approach, and the alternative rejected (one line on why).
**Risks/Edges:** failure modes, empty/error states worth guarding.

## Tasks
- [ ] 1. <first task — becomes a failing test>
- [ ] 2. <...2–5 items total, dependency order>

The task checklist doubles as the plan — tick items off as they complete, so a dead session can resume from the doc.

Step 3: One Confirmation Round

Show the combo doc; get one confirmation from the user. This is a sanity check, not an interview — no question loop. Fold in corrections and go.

Step 4: Execute Continuously

Every task follows @tdd (red → green → refactor), with @verifying before claiming completion and Tier 0 inline self-review at the end — the same discipline as executing-plans, none of its ceremony. Commit per task; tick the checklist as you go.

Read the full file on GitHub · 93 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. 12d ago First seen · 93 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A eef4b0ee7af4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

sketching is a skill published in the GitHub repository MereWhiplash/engram-cogitator (4 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 723 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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