scoping-the-simplest-core

scoping-the-simplest-core is a skill for Claude Code from prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development. It costs 48 tokens per session (1,487 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A roadmap-building guide for turning requirements into a small sequence of development iterations. It begins with a walking skeleton, meaning the smallest complete path through a working product, and then orders the remaining work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting an iterative project, selecting the first end-to-end scenario, ordering feature work, or splitting stories whose acceptance conditions depend on different parts of the system.
Why use it?
Large requirement lists can hide dependencies and make it unclear what to build first. This guide identifies the first runnable user journey and splits later work into manageable steps.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the iterative-development plugin — 6 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when starting an iterative project, selecting the first end-to-end scenario, ordering feature work, or splitting stories whose acceptance conditions depend on different parts of the system.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development/scoping-the-simplest-core
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 prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development --skill scoping-the-simplest-core
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install iterative-development, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills.

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 scoping-the-simplest-core

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development/scoping-the-simplest-core/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development/scoping-the-simplest-core)
Your own site
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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 scoping-the-simplest-core

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development/scoping-the-simplest-core"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development/scoping-the-simplest-core.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 48 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,487 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 $0.00048 $0.01487
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00744
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00297
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00149

Measured 10d ago against content hash afed46989c3d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

scoping-the-simplest-core 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 10d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/check_citations.py, scripts/validate_roadmap.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

skills/scoping-the-simplest-core/SKILL.md · 136 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 136 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Scoping the Simplest Core

Overview

Reads the per-epic requirement files in docs/superpowers/iterations/requirements/ and docs/superpowers/iterations/behavior-scenarios.md, and produces docs/superpowers/iterations/roadmap.md: a walking-skeleton iteration (ITER-0000) plus ordered follow-on iterations. The walking skeleton must produce the first runnable journey scenario. Runs citation and scope review via PAR before committing the roadmap.

When to Use

Invoked by iterative-development during bootstrap after extracting-requirements.

Script Location

All scripts referenced below live in this skill's scripts/ directory, next to this SKILL.md file.

Scoping Process

1. Read the backlog

Read the epic files in docs/superpowers/iterations/requirements/ — scan epic headers and story titles first, then dip into specific epic files for ACs when selecting.

Also read docs/superpowers/iterations/behavior-scenarios.md to understand which scenarios exist and which stories they cover.

2. Define the walking skeleton (ITER-0000)

Select a small cohesive set of stories from as many distinct epics as possible. The walking skeleton should prove the end-to-end shape of the product works.

Scenario requirement: the walking skeleton MUST include stories that close at least ONE journey scenario chain. Prefer the core product journey (e.g., "normal dictation" over "debug investigation"). The skeleton is not done until that journey scenario is runnable as an automated or scripted-reproducible test.

The walking skeleton must also produce:

  • The first stable scenario IDs
  • The first executable behavior harness (the E2E test infrastructure)
  • A small sentinel corpus that can be rerun every iteration

Harness-first task: The walking skeleton's FIRST task should be designing and building the E2E test harness — before implementing any product features. Use the test infrastructure checklist in skills/shared/behavior-evidence-formats.md to guide the design. Document the harness design decisions in the project's docs. The harness is a first-class deliverable, not an afterthought — every subsequent iteration extends it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 136 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. 10d ago First seen · 136 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A afed46989c3d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

scoping-the-simplest-core is a skill published in the GitHub repository prime-radiant-inc/iterative-development (179 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 1,487 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

Related

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