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.
npx skills add rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer --skill cots-configurationgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineerWrote 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/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/cots-configuration)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/cots-configuration"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/cots-configuration/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/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/cots-configuration"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/cots-configuration.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 | $0.00113 | $0.02205 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00056 | $0.01103 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00023 | $0.00441 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00011 | $0.00220 |
Grade A, and why
cots-configuration 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 8d 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 — 171 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
COTS configuration
Where building it yourself is usually the wrong answer.
Why this exists
Vast amounts of enterprise IT are configuration of vendor platforms, not code. Engineers arriving from a pure software background reliably misjudge this work in the same direction: they treat the platform as an inconvenient runtime and build around it, and the resulting customization breaks at the next vendor upgrade.
Three properties make COTS genuinely different:
The vendor's upgrade path is the binding constraint. A customization that works today but blocks next year's mandatory upgrade has a cost that is invisible now and enormous later. The organization will be on this platform for a decade.
Configuration doesn't live in git. It lives in the platform, changed through a UI, with the platform's own change and transport mechanism. Version control, code review, and diffing all work differently or not at all — and pretending otherwise produces an unmanageable estate.
The right answer is frequently "don't." Adapting the process to the platform's standard behavior is usually cheaper over the platform's lifetime than customizing the platform to the process. Recommending that is often the highest-value thing an engineer does on these engagements, and it is not what anyone expects an engineer to say.
When this applies
- Package or SaaS platform implementation
- Customizing a vendor product
- "Can this be configured or does it need code?"
- A platform upgrade threatened by existing customization
- Assessing whether a requirement is worth building
When it doesn't
- Custom software you own end to end
- Integrating with a vendor platform from outside — that's
integration-adapter - The platform is only a data source
Prerequisites
- Locate the workspace:
FDE_WORKSPACE, else the charter Location, else.fde/, else../<repo>-fde/ .fde/00-engagement.md— COTS should be the recorded archetype.fde/03-requirements.md— you're assessing these against platform capability- Vendor documentation, and access to a non-production instance
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.
- 8d ago First seen · 171 lines · 113 tokens per session scan A db4bc06e9401
cots-configuration is a skill published in the GitHub repository rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer (6 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 113 tokens to every session and 2,205 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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