principle-redesign-from-first-principles

principle-redesign-from-first-principles is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards. It costs 21 tokens per session (148 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of principle-redesign-from-first-principles, MIT.

A design method for integrating a new requirement by treating it as if it had been part of the system from the beginning. It examines the affected design and then updates all related types, documentation, examples, and rationale.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when changing an existing architecture or adding a requirement that affects several files and interfaces. Deliver the redesign in smaller steps after deciding on the complete shape.
Why use it?
Bolting a requirement onto an old design can leave inconsistent rules and temporary workarounds. Reconsidering the whole design helps the change fit its purpose.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: user-invocable in frontmatter, but also agents/openai.yaml present.

Part of the pstack plugin — 55 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it when changing an existing architecture or adding a requirement that affects several files and interfaces. Deliver the redesign in smaller steps after deciding on the complete shape.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/principle-redesign-from-first-principles
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 minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards --skill principle-redesign-from-first-principles
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install pstack, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 55 skills, 2 agents.

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 principle-redesign-from-first-principles

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/principle-redesign-from-first-principles/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/principle-redesign-from-first-principles)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/principle-redesign-from-first-principles"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/principle-redesign-from-first-principles/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 principle-redesign-from-first-principles

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/principle-redesign-from-first-principles"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/principle-redesign-from-first-principles.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 148 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 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00021 $0.00148
Opus 5.5 $0.00008 $0.00059
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00004 $0.00030
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00015

Measured 2d ago against content hash e54d6d205206, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

principle-redesign-from-first-principles 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to principle-redesign-from-first-principles — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/pstack/skills/principle-redesign-from-first-principles/SKILL.md · 17 lines

What it actually says

Redesign From First Principles

When integrating a change, don't bolt it onto the existing design. Redesign as if the requirement had been a foundational assumption from the start.

  • Read all affected files and understand the current design
  • Ask: "if we were writing this from scratch with this new requirement, what would we build?"
  • Propagate the change through every reference: types, docs, examples, rationale sections
  • Think about the whole redesign, then deliver it incrementally

This is the method for preserving option value when integrating changes into an existing design.

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. 2d ago First seen · 17 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A e54d6d205206

Subscribe to this mod's changes

principle-redesign-from-first-principles is a skill published in the GitHub repository minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards (47 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 148 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to principle-redesign-from-first-principles, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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