code-standards

A set of rules for writing code that is clear, simple, safe, and easy to maintain. It applies across programming languages, applications, infrastructure, and configuration files.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing, changing, reviewing, refactoring, or cleaning up code and configuration, while keeping responsibilities and behavior visible in the implementation.
Why use it?
It helps prevent code whose purpose and assumptions are difficult for another developer or agent to understand. It also gives a consistent way to review and refactor existing code.

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/metraton/gaia/code-standards
Any agent
npx skills add metraton/gaia --skill code-standards
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/metraton/gaia

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 50 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,468 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 $0.00050 $0.01468
Opus 5 $0.00025 $0.00734
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00294
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00147

Measured 2d ago against content hash e5d46cbc4851, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

code-standards 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 2d 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/code-standards/SKILL.md · 147 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 147 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Code Standards

Code Standards governs how code is expressed — clarity, simplicity, safety, and maintainability — not which architectural pattern should exist. Use the applicable domain or pattern guidance to determine the design; use these standards to implement that design clearly and safely.

Iron Law

Write code so that its behavior, responsibility, and intent can be understood from the implementation itself. Prefer code that explains itself over explanations surrounding unclear code.

Mental Model

A good implementation lets another engineer — or another agent — determine what assumptions it relies on and where to look when behavior must change. Clarity reduces the amount of inference required to safely modify the system.

Rules

1. Make responsibility visible

Before adding code, identify the responsibility being implemented and the existing pattern it belongs to; names, boundaries, and structure should reveal that responsibility. Follow the local pattern when one exists — it settles the form of what you write, never whether it was warranted, and matching what surrounds you is no evidence that what surrounds you earned its place. A new abstraction or pattern should exist because the problem requires it, not because the current implementation can be made more elaborate.

2. Prefer the simplest complete implementation

Implement the behavior required by the current problem. Additional abstractions, configuration, indirection, branches, or extensibility added for hypothetical future cases increase the number of assumptions a reader must understand and the number of places a future change can fail. Safety comes from making current assumptions and boundaries explicit, not from anticipating every possible implementation.

3. Make behavior explicit

Important behavior should be visible in code rather than hidden behind unexpected side effects, implicit state, or unrelated abstractions. Inputs, transformations, state changes, and failure paths should be traceable from the implementation.

Read the full file on GitHub · 147 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. 2d ago First seen · 147 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A e5d46cbc4851

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code-standards is a skill published in the GitHub repository metraton/gaia (3 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 1,468 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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