meaningful-contribution

A development practice that requires a code change to be supported by evidence that it works. It defines the expected behavior, likely failure cases, and the checks needed before calling the work complete.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when implementing features, fixing bugs, refactoring, changing configuration, updating migrations, or preparing a pull request. It helps choose focused tests and other verification suited to the change's risk.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of accepting code that was merely generated or that only works for the happy path. It also prevents claiming tests or checks that were never run.

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/mrmps/chomsky-stack/meaningful-contribution
Any agent
npx skills add mrmps/chomsky-stack --skill meaningful-contribution
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mrmps/chomsky-stack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 79 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 963 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 $0.00079 $0.00963
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.00481
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00193
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00096

Measured 2d ago against content hash 349fe5ae7d12, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

meaningful-contribution 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/meaningful-contribution/SKILL.md · 99 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 99 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Meaningful Contribution

Treat the deliverable as a change plus credible evidence that it works. Match the depth of proof to the change's risk, and never claim checks that were not run.

Establish the proof contract

Before editing:

  1. State the user-visible or system-visible behavior that must change.
  2. Identify the narrowest way to observe that behavior.
  3. List the important failure modes and non-happy paths.
  4. Find the repository's own instructions and existing test patterns.
  5. Choose the evidence required for completion.

For a bug fix, reproduce the failure before changing code whenever feasible. For a feature, define concrete acceptance examples. For a refactor, define the behavior and interfaces that must remain unchanged.

Build the smallest coherent change

  • Prefer the smallest change that fully satisfies the proof contract.
  • Keep names, types, and abstractions truthful. A name is a contract; rename or redesign anything that requires “it says X, but really means Y” to understand it.
  • State expected inputs, outputs, state transitions, and behavior for invalid or unexpected inputs.
  • Fit the repository's established domain model and patterns. Do not introduce a competing abstraction without a clear need.
  • Read every changed line in context after generation. Remove accidental complexity, dead branches, broad casts, and unrelated cleanup.

Prove behavior in layers

Use the applicable layers below. Do not substitute static inspection for runtime evidence when runtime behavior changed.

1. Observe it directly

Exercise the changed path manually or through the smallest representative command. Confirm the actual output, UI state, side effect, or failure behavior.

For UI work, inspect each affected viewport and interaction state. For APIs or jobs, exercise realistic input and inspect the response plus relevant persisted or emitted state.

2. Add automated regression coverage

Encode the observed behavior in the narrowest stable test that would catch a regression. Prefer behavior assertions over implementation details.

Read the full file on GitHub · 99 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. 2d ago First seen · 99 lines · 79 tokens per session scan A 349fe5ae7d12

Subscribe to this mod's changes

meaningful-contribution is a skill published in the GitHub repository mrmps/chomsky-stack (7 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 79 tokens to every session and 963 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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