horse-race

horse-race is a skill for Codex from qiao/horse-race. It costs 130 tokens per session (3,975 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A competition workflow where several coding agents independently solve the same programming task and then compare and improve their solutions.

In plain words
What is it for?
It creates isolated workspaces, runs improvement rounds using the other solutions, and ranks the final results with independent judges.
Why use it?
It gives you multiple implementations and structured judging when choosing among possible solutions.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: runs codex exec. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex.

Good fit It creates isolated workspaces, runs improvement rounds using the other solutions, and ranks the final results with independent judges.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/qiao/horse-race/horse-race
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 qiao/horse-race --skill horse-race
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/qiao/horse-race

Made for: 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 horse-race

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/qiao/horse-race/horse-race"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/qiao/horse-race/horse-race.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 130 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,975 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.
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 $0.00130 $0.03975
Opus 5 $0.00065 $0.01988
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00795
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00398

Measured 12d ago against content hash bec1850912a4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

horse-race 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 12d 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.

SKILL.md · 411 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 411 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Horse Race: Competitive Multi-Agent Problem Solving

You are orchestrating a "horse race" — multiple independent agents competing to produce the best solution to a programming task. Agents can be Claude Code subagents or OpenAI Codex CLI agents (when available). The process has three phases: independent implementation, cross-pollination improvement rounds, and Borda count consensus voting by independent judges.

Overview

Phase 0: Detect Codex CLI
  `which codex` → found?
  Yes → 2 Claude Code + 2 Codex CLI agents (4 total)
  No  → 3 Claude Code agents

Phase 1: Independent Implementation
  Agent A (Claude) ──► Solution A
  Agent B (Claude) ──► Solution B    (all in parallel, isolated worktrees)
  Agent C (Codex)  ──► Solution C
  Agent D (Codex)  ──► Solution D

Phase 2: Improvement Rounds (repeat N times)
  Each agent receives ALL other agents' diffs
  Agent A sees B+C+D diffs ──► Improved A'
  Agent B sees A+C+D diffs ──► Improved B'   (all in parallel)
  Agent C sees A+B+D diffs ──► Improved C'
  Agent D sees A+B+C diffs ──► Improved D'

Phase 3: Borda Count Voting by Independent Judges
  3 fresh judge agents rank all solutions
  Points tallied, highest Borda score wins
  Ties broken by a 4th independent judge
  Winning diff applied to current branch

Defaults

  • Implementation agents: 4 if Codex CLI available (2 Claude Code + 2 Codex), otherwise 3 (all Claude Code)
  • Improvement rounds: 1
  • Voting judges: 3
  • Voting method: Borda count, ties broken by independent tiebreak judge

The user can override these, e.g., "horse race this with 5 agents and 3 rounds".

Execution

Step 0: Preparation

Before spawning agents:

  1. Confirm you're in a git repository with a clean working tree (no uncommitted changes). If dirty, ask the user to commit or stash first.
  2. Extract the task description from the user's message.
  3. Parse any overrides for agent count or round count.
  4. Note the current branch name and HEAD commit.
  5. Detect Codex CLI by running which codex. If the command is found, set codex_available = true and plan for 2 Claude Code agents + 2 Codex CLI agents (4 total). If not found, set codex_available = false and use 3 Claude Code agents. Tell the user which configuration was detected.

Read the full file on GitHub · 411 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. 12d ago First seen · 411 lines · 130 tokens per session scan A bec1850912a4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

horse-race is a skill published in the GitHub repository qiao/horse-race (5 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 130 tokens to every session and 3,975 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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