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.
npx skills add nWave-ai/nWave --skill nw-command-design-patternsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nWave-ai/nWaveWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-command-design-patterns)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-command-design-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-command-design-patterns/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-command-design-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-command-design-patterns.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- medium Agent Snooping · line 248 Skill enumerates or reads other installed skills. Access to other skills' SKILL.md files or the skills directory reveals prompt instructions, capabilities, and secrets that should be invisible to peer skills.Fix: Remove all code or instructions that list or read other skills' files or directories. Skills should operate independently; cross-skill access is a privilege escalation.
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00031 | $0.02260 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00012 | $0.00904 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00006 | $0.00452 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00226 |
Grade A, and why
nw-command-design-patterns 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 282 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Command Design Patterns
The Forge Model (Gold Standard)
forge.md at 40 lines is the reference dispatcher. Contains: header (wave, agent, overview) | Agent invocation (name + command + config) | Success criteria (checklist) | Next wave handoff | Expected outputs. Every dispatcher should aspire to this pattern.
Command Categories
| Category | Description | Size Target | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | Direct action, minimal delegation | 40-80 lines | forge, start, version, git |
| Dispatcher | Delegates to one agent with context | 40-150 lines | research, review, execute |
| Orchestrator | Coordinates multiple agents/phases | 100-300 lines | develop, document |
Declarative Command Template
Commands declare WHAT, not HOW. The agent knows how to do its job.
# DW-{NAME}: {Title}
**Wave**: {WAVE_NAME}
**Agent**: {persona} ({agent-id})
## Overview
One paragraph: what this command does and when to use it.
## Context Files Required
- {path} - {why needed}
## Agent Invocation
@{agent-id}
Execute \*{command} for {parameters}.
**Context Files:**
- {files the orchestrator reads and passes}
**Configuration:**
- {key}: {value} # {comment}
## Success Criteria
- [ ] {measurable outcome}
- [ ] {quality gate}
## Next Wave
**Handoff To**: {next wave or workflow step}
**Deliverables**: {what this command produces}
# Expected outputs:
# - {file paths}
Size Targets and Evidence
Research (Chroma Research, Anthropic context engineering): focused prompts (~300 tokens) outperform full prompts (~113k tokens) | Claude shows most pronounced performance gap | Information buried mid-prompt gets deprioritized ("Lost in the Middle") | Opus 4.6 is proactive/self-directing; verbose instructions cause overtriggering
Targets: Dispatchers 40-150 lines | Orchestrators 100-300 lines | Current average 437 lines; target under 150
The Duplication Triangle
Commands duplicate content in three directions, all waste tokens:
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 282 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A a406791ea417
nw-command-design-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository nWave-ai/nWave (620 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 2,260 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-09-03.
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