escalation

escalation is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit. It costs 316 tokens per session (860 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of rules for asking a separate advice-focused agent for help after repeated attempts fail or an architecture decision remains unclear.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it after the allowed retry cycles are exhausted, for unresolved design or architecture questions, and for a second opinion on research or copywriting work.
Why use it?
It prevents endless retries and gives difficult problems a fresh review with the previous attempts and blocker explained.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: shipped in a Claude Code plugin, but also runs codex exec. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Codex.

Part of the coordinator-kit plugin — 13 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it after the allowed retry cycles are exhausted, for unresolved design…

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit/escalation
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 nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit --skill escalation
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install coordinator-kit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 13 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 escalation

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit/escalation.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit/escalation)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit/escalation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit/escalation.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 316 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 860 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 $0.00316 $0.00860
Opus 5 $0.00158 $0.00430
Sonnet 5 $0.00063 $0.00172
Haiku 4.5 $0.00032 $0.00086

Measured 2d ago against content hash 6d6dc0a23d7a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

escalation 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.

plugins/coordinator-kit/skills/escalation/SKILL.md · 50 lines

What it actually says

Escalation

This skill packages CLAUDE.md's Escalation section for delivery via a plugin. If this project's coordinator uses the file-copy install, the project-root CLAUDE.md already carries this exact content under its own "Escalation" heading — this skill is a second, parallel delivery path for the same rules, not a replacement.

  • If an agent hits coordinator-kit:execute-loop's retry cap on the same class of problem — 2 failed respawn cycles, escalating on the 3rd failure — or a design/architecture question has no clear path forward from normal iteration, spawn an agent with the advice tier (fable, per CLAUDE.md's Model routing section) for advice. Prompt: self-contained summary of what was tried and what's blocking, framed as "what would you try next." This is distinct from a routine respawn — don't reach for it on a first failure.
  • For UI/UX design decisions, copy/copywriting (marketing text, UX microcopy, landing-page text), research tasks, and reviewing generated documents, additionally shell out to codex exec (OpenAI Codex CLI, if installed and authenticated) from within a dispatched agent for a second, differently-trained opinion — see coordinator-kit:codex-second-opinion for install, auth, and invocation mechanics. Present its output alongside a Claude-native alternative when the choice is user-facing; adopt it outright for mechanical asks. Engineering-only work (wire types, plumbing, test scaffolding) doesn't need this — the trigger is judgment/perspective value, not mechanical execution.
  • An agent given unrestricted Agent/SendMessage access can spiral into agent-to-agent delegation instead of doing the work. For any infra/execution task, the brief must include: "do not delegate, execute directly; bulk output (test suites, builds, big greps) goes to a scratch file under .coordinator-scratch/ — paste only the decisive lines (failure names, exit codes, the mutation transcript)." A pasted suite log is re-read by that agent on every later step of its own turn (~29% of agent cost in a measured 48M-token session), and the coordinator gates on the decisive lines anyway.
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 Changed · +5 lines · +4 tokens per session 6d6dc0a23d7a
  2. 6d ago First seen · 45 lines · 312 tokens per session scan A 021e1525fd4d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

escalation is a skill published in the GitHub repository nikolamin/claude-coordinator-kit (2 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 316 tokens to every session and 860 once invoked, about $0.0016 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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