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 Ozzeron/prompt-pack --skill reuse-before-creategit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Ozzeron/prompt-packWrote 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/ozzeron/prompt-pack/reuse-before-create)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ozzeron/prompt-pack/reuse-before-create"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ozzeron/prompt-pack/reuse-before-create/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/ozzeron/prompt-pack/reuse-before-create"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ozzeron/prompt-pack/reuse-before-create.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 | $0.00089 | $0.02853 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00044 | $0.01426 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00018 | $0.00571 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00285 |
Grade A, and why
reuse-before-create 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 — 229 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Reuse Before Create
The single most consistent way AI coding agents degrade a codebase is by creating new artifacts when existing ones would do. New components instead of props. New utilities instead of imports. New types instead of references. The codebase doubles in volume, quality halves, and every requirement change now means N edits instead of one.
This skill is the central rule for that. Every coding skill in this pack inherits it. It is not aspirational; it is a precondition for any code-creating action.
When to use
Always, whenever you are about to write a new component, function, hook, util, type, constant, schema, configuration, or dependency. This is a precondition step, not an optional review.
The rule
Before writing anything new, search for what already exists. Reuse first; create last.
The order of preference is strict and non-negotiable:
- Reuse as-is — existing artifact fits, import and use
- Extend — add a prop, option, generic, or branch to existing artifact
- Compose — combine existing artifacts into a new shape without rewriting them
- Extract — pull a shared core out of two near-duplicates; both use the new core
- Create new — only when none of the above apply
Each step further down costs more — both in code volume and in long-term maintenance. Skipping straight to "create new" without proving the prior steps don't apply is the default failure mode this skill prevents.
Justification is not optional
When you do create something new, a one-line justification is mandatory, not a nice-to-have. It belongs in the commit message, the PR description, the handoff, or as an inline comment near the new artifact. Format:
"Created
formatDateTz: no existing util handles ISO date with timezone offset; the project'sformatDatestrips the zone."
This rule applies to every kind of new artifact: component, hook, util, type, constant, schema, dependency, file, folder.
If you can't write the justification in one sentence, you haven't searched hard enough. Go back to step 1.
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 Changed · +4 lines · +64 tokens per session 5f723a98ac4a
- 9d ago First seen · 225 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A 31f2f2147f39
reuse-before-create is a skill published in the GitHub repository Ozzeron/prompt-pack (8 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 89 tokens to every session and 2,853 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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