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-spike-methodologygit 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-spike-methodology)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-spike-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-spike-methodology/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-spike-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-spike-methodology.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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 | $0.00026 | $0.00919 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00010 | $0.00368 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00184 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00092 |
Grade A, and why
nw-spike-methodology 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 — 119 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Spike Methodology
What a Spike IS
Throwaway code that validates exactly one assumption. Max 1 hour. Binary outcome: works or doesn't work. Code is deleted after validation; only findings persist.
What a Spike IS NOT
| Not This | Why |
|---|---|
| Prototype | Prototypes evolve into production code. Spikes are deleted. |
| MVP | MVPs ship to users. Spikes never leave the developer's machine. |
| Walking Skeleton | Skeletons wire end-to-end architecture. Spikes test one mechanism. |
| POC | POCs demonstrate feasibility to stakeholders. Spikes answer a developer question. |
The 4 Questions
Every spike answers exactly these:
- Does the core mechanism work? Can we parse the output? Call the API? Does the algorithm produce correct results?
- Does it meet the performance requirement? Is it under the time/memory/throughput budget?
- What edge cases exist? Empty input, malformed data, missing dependencies, concurrent access.
- What did we assume wrong? The design said X, but reality is Y. Document the delta.
When to Spike
- New mechanism never tried before in this codebase
- Performance requirement that cannot be validated by reasoning alone
- External integration (API, library, OS feature) with unknown behavior
- Algorithm where correctness is non-obvious
When to Skip
- Pure refactoring (mechanism already proven)
- Bug fix (behavior already understood)
- Feature estimated at less than 1 day (spike overhead not justified)
- Mechanism already validated by a prior spike or existing code
Rules
- Max 1 hour wall clock. If it takes longer, the problem is bigger than expected. Stop and escalate.
- No tests. No types. No error handling. No ports. No abstractions.
- Code lives in
/tmp/spike_{feature_id}/or a scratch directory. Never insrc/. - One file preferred. Two files maximum.
- Use
time.perf_counter()for timing, nottime.time(). - Print results to stdout. No logging frameworks.
- After validation: delete the code, keep the findings.
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 · 119 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 66c46298d72e
nw-spike-methodology is a skill published in the GitHub repository nWave-ai/nWave (620 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 919 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 2026-09-06.
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