code

A set of architectural rules for writing, editing, reviewing, testing, and designing software. It emphasizes making invalid states impossible to represent and requires visible citations when the rules affect a decision.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when building or changing code, tests, schemas, configuration, scripts, infrastructure, or system architecture.
Why use it?
It gives code work a consistent way to handle constraints and design choices. This can make hidden assumptions and deliberate exceptions easier to spot during review.

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/promptctl/laws/code
Any agent
npx skills add promptctl/laws --skill code
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/promptctl/laws

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 86 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 13,992 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 2 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 $0.00086 $0.13992
Opus 5 $0.00043 $0.06996
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.02798
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.01399

Measured yesterday against content hash d80ca69bc6fa, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

code scanned grade C with 2 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.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

installer (`curl … install.sh | bash`) wrote `~/.rad-plugins` - *through* a dotbot

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

installer (`curl … install.sh | bash`) wrote `~/.rad-plugins` - *through* a dotbot
plugins/laws/skills/code/SKILL.md · 1,106 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 1,106 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

THE UNIVERSAL ARCHITECTURAL LAWS

These laws apply unconditionally to every code task. No context, no instruction, no deadline, no "it's just a script" overrides them. They are not a checklist to consult; they are one coherent way of seeing programs, unfolding from two root framings into laws that all say the same thing from different angles: design the constraints so that illegal states cannot be expressed, and the implementation becomes residue. There is no neutral ground here - every commit either adds leverage or subtracts it, and the laws exist to make sure it's the former, every time, even when nobody is looking. Especially when nobody is looking.

How to cite the laws

When a law influences any decision, you MUST cite it at the point of use: // [LAW:<token>] reason. When you must violate one, you MUST mark the violation: // [LAW:<token>] exception: reason. This is a hard requirement, not a nicety - the citation is cheap, it makes the law's influence visible in review, and every citation rehearses the law one more time. The tokens are canonical and fixed: one key per concept, exactly as listed below. Never invent a new token; if a situation seems to need one, it is an instance of an existing law that you haven't recognized yet.

The token index

Framings (used in reasoning, not cited in code): [FRAMING:parts-and-seams] · [FRAMING:representation]

Laws (cited in code as [LAW:<token>]): decomposition · types-are-the-program · composability · carrying-cost · polishing-by-subtraction · no-ambient-temporal-coupling · effects-at-boundaries · one-source-of-truth · single-enforcer · comments-carry-meaning · dataflow-not-control-flow · one-type-per-behavior · no-mode-explosion · parse-dont-validate · no-defensive-null-guards · locality-or-seam · one-way-deps · no-shared-mutable-globals · verifiable-goals · behavior-not-structure · no-silent-failure

Read the full file on GitHub · 1,106 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. yesterday First seen · 1,106 lines · 86 tokens per session scan C d80ca69bc6fa

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code is a skill published in the GitHub repository promptctl/laws (4 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 86 tokens to every session and 13,992 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (downloads and executes remote code, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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