Scale Game

Scale Game is a skill for Claude Code from obra/superpowers-skills. It costs 27 tokens per session (529 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A way to test a design at extreme conditions, such as one item versus one billion or milliseconds versus a year. These comparisons show which assumptions fail as volume, speed, users, duration, or failures change.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when evaluating algorithms, services, error handling, concurrency, memory use, and long-running state. It guides you to test both very small and very large versions of an important dimension.
Why use it?
It helps reveal limits and failure modes that normal test cases hide. It can expose needs for asynchronous work, caching, better error handling, or protection against resource exhaustion.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: when-to-use in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it when evaluating algorithms, services, error handling, concurrency, memory use, and long-running state. It guides you to test both very small and very large versions of an important dimension.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/obra/superpowers-skills/scale-game
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 obra/superpowers-skills --skill scale-game
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/obra/superpowers-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

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 Scale Game

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/scale-game/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/scale-game)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/scale-game"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/scale-game/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for Scale Game

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/scale-game"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers-skills/scale-game.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 27 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 529 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. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 20 Feb 2026
  • Snyk pass 20 Feb 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00027 $0.00529
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00264
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00106
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00053

Measured 9d ago against content hash 43373c54188b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Scale Game 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 9d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/problem-solving/scale-game/SKILL.md · 64 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 64 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Scale Game

Overview

Test your approach at extreme scales to find what breaks and what surprisingly survives.

Core principle: Extremes expose fundamental truths hidden at normal scales.

Quick Reference

Scale Dimension Test At Extremes What It Reveals
Volume 1 item vs 1B items Algorithmic complexity limits
Speed Instant vs 1 year Async requirements, caching needs
Users 1 user vs 1B users Concurrency issues, resource limits
Duration Milliseconds vs years Memory leaks, state growth
Failure rate Never fails vs always fails Error handling adequacy

Process

  1. Pick dimension - What could vary extremely?
  2. Test minimum - What if this was 1000x smaller/faster/fewer?
  3. Test maximum - What if this was 1000x bigger/slower/more?
  4. Note what breaks - Where do limits appear?
  5. Note what survives - What's fundamentally sound?

Examples

Example 1: Error Handling

Normal scale: "Handle errors when they occur" works fine At 1B scale: Error volume overwhelms logging, crashes system Reveals: Need to make errors impossible (type systems) or expect them (chaos engineering)

Example 2: Synchronous APIs

Normal scale: Direct function calls work At global scale: Network latency makes synchronous calls unusable Reveals: Async/messaging becomes survival requirement, not optimization

Example 3: In-Memory State

Normal duration: Works for hours/days At years: Memory grows unbounded, eventual crash Reveals: Need persistence or periodic cleanup, can't rely on memory

Red Flags You Need This

  • "It works in dev" (but will it work in production?)
  • No idea where limits are
  • "Should scale fine" (without testing)
  • Surprised by production behavior

Remember

  • Extremes reveal fundamentals
  • What works at one scale fails at another
  • Test both directions (bigger AND smaller)
  • Use insights to validate architecture early

Read the full file on GitHub · 64 lines

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. 9d ago First seen · 64 lines · 27 tokens per session scan A 43373c54188b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Scale Game is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers-skills (746 stars, last pushed 10mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 529 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-30.

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