chrysopoeia

chrysopoeia is a skill for Claude Code from pjt222/agent-almanac. It costs 94 tokens per session (1,884 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for improving existing code by finding slow or resource-heavy parts, unclear interfaces, unused code, and other unnecessary weight. It focuses on refining working code rather than replacing its overall design.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to improve performance, reduce bundle size or memory use, simplify an API, or prepare a cleaner core for open-source release.
Why use it?
It helps separate worthwhile code from code that wastes resources or makes a project harder to maintain.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the agent-almanac plugin — 122 skills, 76 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to improve performance, reduce bundle size or memory use, simplify an API, or prepare a cleaner core for open-source release.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/pjt222/agent-almanac/chrysopoeia
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 pjt222/agent-almanac --skill chrysopoeia
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/pjt222/agent-almanac

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agent-almanac, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 122 skills, 76 agents.

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 chrysopoeia

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pjt222/agent-almanac/chrysopoeia/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/pjt222/agent-almanac/chrysopoeia)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/pjt222/agent-almanac/chrysopoeia"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pjt222/agent-almanac/chrysopoeia/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 chrysopoeia

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/pjt222/agent-almanac/chrysopoeia"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pjt222/agent-almanac/chrysopoeia.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 94 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,884 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
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 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 $0.00094 $0.01884
Opus 5 $0.00047 $0.00942
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00377
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00188

Measured 8d ago against content hash e9e20f4f9e5b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

chrysopoeia 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 8d 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.

i18n/caveman-lite/skills/chrysopoeia/SKILL.md · 179 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 179 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Chrysopoeia

Systematically extract maximum value from existing code — identify what's golden (high-value, well-designed), what's lead (resource-heavy, poorly optimized), and what's dross (dead weight). Then amplify the gold, transmute the lead, and remove the dross.

When to Use

  • Optimizing a working but sluggish codebase for performance
  • Refining an API surface that has accumulated cruft over iterations
  • Reducing bundle size, memory footprint, or startup time
  • Preparing code for open-source release (extracting the valuable core)
  • When code works correctly but doesn't shine — it needs polish, not rewrite

Inputs

  • Required: Codebase or module to optimize (file paths)
  • Required: Value metric (performance, API clarity, bundle size, readability)
  • Optional: Profiling data or benchmarks showing current performance
  • Optional: Budget or target (e.g., "reduce bundle by 40%", "sub-100ms response")
  • Optional: Constraints (can't change public API, must maintain backward compat)

Procedure

Step 1: Assay — Classify the Material

Systematically classify every element by its value contribution.

  1. Define the value metric from Inputs (performance, clarity, size, etc.)
  2. Inventory the codebase elements (functions, modules, exports, dependencies)
  3. Classify each element:
Value Classification:
+--------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Gold   | High value, well-designed. Amplify and protect.         |
| Silver | Good value, minor imperfections. Polish.                |
| Lead   | Functional but heavy — poor performance, complex API.   |
|        | Transmute into something lighter.                       |
| Dross  | Dead code, unused exports, vestigial features.          |
|        | Remove entirely.                                        |
+--------+---------------------------------------------------------+
  1. For performance optimization, profile first:
    • Identify hot paths (where time is spent)
    • Identify cold paths (rarely executed code that may be dross)
    • Measure memory allocation patterns
  2. Produce the Assay Report: element-by-element classification with evidence

Read the full file on GitHub · 179 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. 8d ago First seen · 179 lines · 94 tokens per session scan A e9e20f4f9e5b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

chrysopoeia is a skill published in the GitHub repository pjt222/agent-almanac (33 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 94 tokens to every session and 1,884 once invoked, about $0.0005 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 2026-09-03.

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