idea-prototype

A step-by-step workflow for testing an idea about the PHP language or its implementation. It turns a short hypothesis into a throwaway C prototype, measurements, examples, and a decision about whether to continue.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to test whether a change could improve PHP, simplify a language feature, or alter an internal algorithm, using benchmarks and .phpt tests before deciding whether to pursue the idea.
Why use it?
It gives an experiment a clear record and a measurable result instead of leaving the idea as speculation. It also separates temporary prototype code from production code.

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/pronskiy/php-src-developer/idea-prototype
Any agent
npx skills add pronskiy/php-src-developer --skill idea-prototype
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/pronskiy/php-src-developer

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 129 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,047 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 $0.00129 $0.05047
Opus 5 $0.00064 $0.02524
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.01009
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00505

Measured yesterday against content hash cde8b2627aa7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

idea-prototype 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.

plugins/php-core-developer/skills/idea-prototype/SKILL.md · 303 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 303 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

idea-prototype

Single skill that drives a php-src idea prototype from a one-liner to a verdict. Like the bug flow, it's phased and resumable; unlike the bug flow, one skill owns all phases. Each invocation advances one phase forward (or resumes a blocked phase).

Inputs

  1. A one-line hypothesis (required on first run only) — e.g. "caching common zend_string parameter names could speed up function calls", "adding pattern syntax X would simplify Y", "replacing the linear scan in zend_hash_str_find with sorted lookup helps tiny tables".
  2. $PHP_SRC_DIR with built sapi/cli/php.
  3. SPEC.md in the task directory (resolved per _shared/task-dir.md) — created on the first run, read on subsequent runs.

What it produces

  • SPEC.md (type: idea) in the task directory resolved per _shared/task-dir.md (default $PHP_SRC_DIR/.claude/php-core-dev/idea-<slug>/SPEC.md). Tracks the hypothesis end to end.
  • Prototype C-code changes under $PHP_SRC_DIR — explicitly throwaway, not production-ready.
  • Benchmark scripts and/or .phpt examples demonstrating the idea.
  • A pursue-as-rfc / reframe / kill verdict in the final phase.

Phases owned

# Phase Post-guardrail
1 Context Hypothesis restated in own words; subsystem identified
2 Hypothesis & Metric Success metric is concrete and falsifiable
3 Research At least one prior-art source ran (owned by /research, hard-gated for idea flow)
4 Survey & Plan Smallest viable prototype change identified
5 Prototype make -j$(nproc) exits 0 with the patch applied; build is clean
6 Measurement & Verdict Numbers (or examples) recorded; honest verdict written

This skill owns all six phases except Research, which is owned by /research. On each invocation /idea-prototype picks up the first non-done phase and advances it; when the next phase is Research it refuses and instructs the user to run /research (or to mark the phase skipped in SPEC.md with a reason). Research is hard-gated for the idea flow — Survey & Plan will not start until Research is done or skipped. This differs from the bug flow, which soft-warns and proceeds.

Read the full file on GitHub · 303 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 · 303 lines · 129 tokens per session scan A cde8b2627aa7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

idea-prototype is a skill published in the GitHub repository pronskiy/php-src-developer (8 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 129 tokens to every session and 5,047 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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