Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to Rethunk-AI/clodbridge. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rethunk-AI/clodbridge/main/.cursor/skills/validate-design-early/SKILL.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Rethunk-AI/clodbridgeWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/rethunk-ai/clodbridge/validate-design-early)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rethunk-ai/clodbridge/validate-design-early"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rethunk-ai/clodbridge/validate-design-early/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rethunk-ai/clodbridge/validate-design-early"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rethunk-ai/clodbridge/validate-design-early.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00025 | $0.00953 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00010 | $0.00381 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00191 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00095 |
Grade A, and why
validate-design-early 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 131 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Validate Design Early
The Principle
Ask about major design decisions BEFORE you implement them, not after.
What Counts as "Major"
| Decision | Ask? | Example |
|---|---|---|
| New subsystem | YES | "Should we add file watching?" |
| Multiple valid approaches | YES | "MCP Resources: raw files, JSON index, or both?" |
| Architectural direction | YES | "Should rules use glob matching or simple string matching?" |
| Unstated requirement | YES | "I'm adding --dump-always-rules for hook integration" |
| New CLI flag | YES | "Should the server support a --config flag?" |
| Low-level implementation | NO | "Should I use Map or object for caching?" |
| Code style | NO | "Tabs or spaces?" |
| Obvious from context | NO | "Should I test this?" (Yes, always) |
When to Ask
After planning, before writing code.
Timeline
❌ DON'T:
Plan the feature → Write 200 lines → Commit → Ask approval
✅ DO:
Plan the feature → Ask for approval → Write code → Commit
The "100-line rule"
If you're about to write 100+ lines for a feature, ask first.
If you're writing 30 lines of straightforward implementation, you can skip asking (it's unlikely to be wrong).
How to Ask
Use AskUserQuestion with concrete options:
Example 1: Binary Decision
Question: "Should clodbridge expose MCP Resources (cursor:// URIs)?"
Options:
A) Yes - users will want direct file access via URIs
B) No - tools are sufficient; resources add complexity
C) Yes, but only for rules (not skills/agents)
Example 2: Choice Among Options
Question: "For MCP Resources, should we expose:"
Options:
A) Raw file content only (cursor://rules/{name} returns .mdc text)
B) JSON indices only (cursor://rules returns list of rules)
C) Both (raw content + JSON indices)
D) Neither (just use tools, not resources)
Example 3: Clarifying Scope
Question: "I'm planning to add a --dump-always-rules flag for Claude Code
hook integration. This outputs rule content as JSON for UserPromptSubmit hooks."
Options:
A) Yes, this is useful
B) No, skip it (CLAUDE.md instructions are enough)
C) Yes, but make it a separate tool instead of a CLI flag
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 131 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A c95c6f9e8401
validate-design-early is a skill published in the GitHub repository Rethunk-AI/clodbridge (0 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 25 tokens to every session and 953 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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