how

A code-exploration guide for explaining how a subsystem works and where a change belongs before editing it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to trace runtime flows, identify entry points and data movement, explain current behaviour, or critique an existing design.
Why use it?
It helps developers understand unfamiliar code paths, ownership, and boundaries before making changes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/painhardcore/pstack/how
Any agent
npx skills add painhardcore/pstack --skill how
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/painhardcore/pstack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 25 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 572 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00025 $0.00572
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00286
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00114
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00057

Measured yesterday against content hash f73a445093d9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

how 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 yesterday.

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.

.opencode/skills/how/SKILL.md · 57 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 57 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

How

Build a working mental model from the code. Explain entry points, data flow, ownership, boundaries, and non-obvious behavior. Use why when the user wants historical motivation.

Choose the mode

  • Explain. Trace and explain the current system.
  • Critique. Explain first, then identify architectural problems and practical improvements.

Treat one module or symbol as simple. Treat a flow across several modules or services as complex.

Explore

For a simple question, inspect and explain inline.

For a complex question, divide the system into two to four non-overlapping slices. If the host supports subagents and the user permits them, assign each slice to a read-only subagent using the parent model. Use different available models only for an explicitly requested multi-model critique. If delegation is unavailable or forbidden, inspect the slices inline in the same order.

Each slice must:

  1. Find the real entry point.
  2. Trace callers, callees, state, and types from input to output.
  3. Read code instead of inferring behavior from file names.
  4. Record specific files and symbols.
  5. Note behavior a newcomer would probably misunderstand.

Use references/explorer-prompt.md for delegated exploration and references/explainer-prompt.md for synthesis.

Explain

Reconcile the slices into one account. Resolve contradictions by reading the code. Do not paste raw exploration reports.

Use only the sections the question needs:

  • Overview. What the subsystem does and why it exists.
  • Key concepts. The small set of types, services, or abstractions needed to follow the flow.
  • How it works. The trigger, ordered steps, decisions, state changes, and output.
  • Where things live. The files and symbols a maintainer should open first.
  • Gotchas. Hidden state, surprising coupling, or edge cases.

Critique

Explain the system before judging it. When permitted, ask two or more read-only critics to assess the same explanation and source files independently. Prefer different available model families when the host supports model selection. Otherwise perform one inline critique against the same rubric.

Read the full file on GitHub · 57 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files 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.

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. yesterday First seen · 57 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A f73a445093d9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

how is a skill published in the GitHub repository painhardcore/pstack (1 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 25 tokens to every session and 572 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 2026-08-31.

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