optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries

optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from PostHog/posthog-foss. It costs 177 tokens per session (5,182 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for making ClickHouse database queries faster, including HogQL queries, which are converted into ClickHouse SQL before execution.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate and improve HogQL insights, reports, query runners, hand-written ClickHouse queries, migrations, or recorded slow queries.
Why use it?
It helps find the actual database work behind a slow query, timeout, memory error, or slow report instead of optimizing only the higher-level query text.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Good fit Use it to investigate and improve HogQL insights, reports, query runners, hand-written ClickHouse queries, migrations, or recorded slow queries.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/posthog/posthog-foss/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries
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 PostHog/posthog-foss --skill optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PostHog/posthog-foss

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/posthog/posthog-foss/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/posthog/posthog-foss/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/posthog/posthog-foss/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/posthog/posthog-foss/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries/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 optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/posthog/posthog-foss/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/posthog/posthog-foss/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 177 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,182 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 warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 5 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Prompt Injection · line 31
    Large whitespace padding was detected (a block of blank lines or a long run of spaces). This can push injected instructions below or to the right of the visible area so a human reviewer never sees them while the agent still reads them. Manual review of the hidden content is recommended.
    Fix: Remove the large whitespace padding (blank-line blocks or long space runs) and review any content hidden below or to the right of it. Keep skill files compact and reviewable so no instructions can be
  • medium Prompt Injection · line 31
    Large whitespace padding was detected (a block of blank lines or a long run of spaces). This can push injected instructions below or to the right of the visible area so a human reviewer never sees them while the agent still reads them. Manual review of the hidden content is recommended.
    Fix: Remove the large whitespace padding (blank-line blocks or long space runs) and review any content hidden below or to the right of it. Keep skill files compact and reviewable so no instructions can be
  • medium Prompt Injection · line 33
    Large whitespace padding was detected (a block of blank lines or a long run of spaces). This can push injected instructions below or to the right of the visible area so a human reviewer never sees them while the agent still reads them. Manual review of the hidden content is recommended.
    Fix: Remove the large whitespace padding (blank-line blocks or long space runs) and review any content hidden below or to the right of it. Keep skill files compact and reviewable so no instructions can be
  • medium Prompt Injection · line 34
    Large whitespace padding was detected (a block of blank lines or a long run of spaces). This can push injected instructions below or to the right of the visible area so a human reviewer never sees them while the agent still reads them. Manual review of the hidden content is recommended.
    Fix: Remove the large whitespace padding (blank-line blocks or long space runs) and review any content hidden below or to the right of it. Keep skill files compact and reviewable so no instructions can be
  • medium Prompt Injection · line 36
    Large whitespace padding was detected (a block of blank lines or a long run of spaces). This can push injected instructions below or to the right of the visible area so a human reviewer never sees them while the agent still reads them. Manual review of the hidden content is recommended.
    Fix: Remove the large whitespace padding (blank-line blocks or long space runs) and review any content hidden below or to the right of it. Keep skill files compact and reviewable so no instructions can be
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 $0.00177 $0.05182
Opus 5 $0.00088 $0.02591
Sonnet 5 $0.00035 $0.01036
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00518

Measured 3d ago against content hash 590b8047a52c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries 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.

.agents/skills/optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries/SKILL.md · 169 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 169 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Optimizing ClickHouse and HogQL queries

Optimizes ClickHouse and HogQL queries (HogQL compiles to ClickHouse), not Postgres / Django ORM. For an app-DB query (Model.objects.filter(...)), stop and use profiling-slow-api-endpoints; Step 0 has the full triage.

Work from the ClickHouse SQL, not the HogQL. Get the ClickHouse SQL the query produces, optimize that, then translate the change back into the HogQL query, query runner, printer, or a migration. Reasoning about HogQL alone hides what ClickHouse executes.

Assumes you can write HogQL. For new queries from scratch use /writing-clickhouse-queries; for migration mechanics, /clickhouse-migrations.

Optimizing every query a team owns

When the job is "optimize all of team X's queries," build the full inventory first or you'll miss some.

  1. Resolve the team to its owned paths with /establishing-code-ownership. Owned paths span backend Python and frontend/src/..., often across several products; don't silently narrow to one product or to the backend.
  2. Find queries across every path. Most are Python (*QueryRunner, execute_hogql_query, raw sync_execute), but plenty are built client-side and POSTed to /query. Grep frontend/ for:
    • api.queryHogQL(...), HogQLQueryString, the hogql`...` template
    • NodeKind.HogQLQuery / kind: 'HogQLQuery' with a query: string
    • nodes that compile to ClickHouse: DataTableNode, EventsQuery, TrendsQuery/InsightVizNode, PropertyFilterType.HogQL
    • literals with SELECT ... FROM events, or product markers ('survey sent', $survey_id)

The same query is sometimes implemented twice (backend runner plus frontend HogQL, often a stalled migration). Both are in-scope; a backend printer/function fix won't reach a hand-built frontend string.

Step 0: confirm you're at the right layer

Check how the query is built:

What you see Where it goes What to use
execute_hogql_query(...), HogQLQuery, a *QueryRunner, an insight, a HogQL .ambr ClickHouse via the HogQL printer This skill
sync_execute(...), client.execute(...), hand-written SELECT ... FROM events, a migration ClickHouse directly (no HogQL) This skill (steps 2-5; skip step 1)
Model.objects.filter(...), .raw(...), a queryset, RawSQL over the app DB Postgres via Django ORM Not this skill. profiling-slow-api-endpoints
personhog_client.*, get_personhog_client(), get_person_by_* personhog (gRPC, Postgres) Not this skill. posthog/personhog_client/README.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 169 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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. 3d ago Changed · -6 tokens per session 590b8047a52c
  2. 11d ago First seen · 169 lines · 183 tokens per session scan A 5140d851e4b3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

optimizing-clickhouse-and-hogql-queries is a skill published in the GitHub repository PostHog/posthog-foss (715 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 177 tokens to every session and 5,182 once invoked, about $0.0009 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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