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 agentmods add skills/nwiizo/cargo-coupling/balanced-couplingnpx skills add nwiizo/cargo-coupling --skill balanced-couplinggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nwiizo/cargo-couplingWrote 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/nwiizo/cargo-coupling/balanced-coupling)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwiizo/cargo-coupling/balanced-coupling"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwiizo/cargo-coupling/balanced-coupling.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00031 | $0.01147 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00015 | $0.00574 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00006 | $0.00229 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00115 |
Grade A, and why
balanced-coupling 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 3d 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 — 116 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Balanced Coupling Model Reference
Based on Vlad Khononov's "Balancing Coupling in Software Design".
The Balance Rule
MODULARITY = STRENGTH XOR DISTANCE
COMPLEXITY = STRENGTH AND DISTANCE
BALANCE = (STRENGTH XOR DISTANCE) OR NOT VOLATILITY
- Modularity emerges when strength and distance counterbalance
- Complexity emerges when both are equal (both high or both low)
- Pragmatic: unbalanced coupling is tolerable if volatility is low
Three Dimensions
1. Integration Strength (Knowledge Shared)
From most to least intrusive:
| Level | Knowledge Type | Implicit/Explicit |
|---|---|---|
| Intrusive | Implementation details, private interfaces | Implicit, fragile |
| Functional | Business rules, functional specifications | Often implicit |
| Model | Domain/business model, data structures | Explicit but broad |
| Contract | Integration contracts, facades | Most explicit, stable |
Key insight: Intrusive and Functional coupling are often implicit — they exist without anyone realizing. Contract coupling is explicit by design.
2. Distance (Cost of Change)
Multiple dimensions contribute to distance:
- Code structure: methods → objects → modules → crates → services
- Organizational: same team vs different teams (Conway's Law)
- Runtime: synchronous (tight) vs asynchronous (loose)
- Lifecycle: shared deployments vs independent deployments
Distance is fractal: the same rules apply at every abstraction level.
3. Volatility (Probability of Change)
Determined by DDD subdomain classification, not just git history:
| Subdomain | Volatility | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Core | High | Competitive advantage, constantly optimized |
| Supporting | Low | Boring CRUD/ETL, rarely changes |
| Generic | Low | Solved problems, stable implementations |
Important: distinguish essential vs accidental volatility. Accidental volatility comes from poor design, not business needs.
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.
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.
- 3d ago First seen · 116 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A 033c670e9099
balanced-coupling is a skill published in the GitHub repository nwiizo/cargo-coupling (96 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 1,147 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-01.
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