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 sandover/ergo --skill ergo-backlog-planninggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sandover/ergoWrote 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/sandover/ergo/ergo-backlog-planning)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sandover/ergo/ergo-backlog-planning"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sandover/ergo/ergo-backlog-planning/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/sandover/ergo/ergo-backlog-planning"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sandover/ergo/ergo-backlog-planning.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 3 findings, up to high
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- high Memory Poisoning · line 52 Skill manipulates agent memory, state, or stored context. Memory corruption can alter personality, override safety rules, or cause unpredictable behavior.Fix: Protect agent memory and state from modification by untrusted content. Use read-only memory for critical instructions and validate all state changes.
- medium Excessive Agency · line 40 Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
- medium Excessive Agency · line 86 Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
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 | $0.00073 | $0.01667 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00036 | $0.00834 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00015 | $0.00333 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00167 |
Grade A, and why
ergo-backlog-planning 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 9d 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 — 130 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Ergo Backlog Planning
Ergo is a CLI tool for writing and managing a task graph at the repository level. Tasks have state and dependency relationships.
The basic usage model is that you take the feature or goal assigned to you by the user and methodically break it down into tasks, file those tasks in ergo. One or more agents or subagents (perhaps working in parallel) will later claim and implement the tasks.
When graph construction takes more than one command, create the new task or
epic with --draft. Draft work stays visible for review but never appears in
ergo list --ready and cannot be claimed. Add children and dependency edges,
then run ergo open <id> once per leaf after its placement and ordering are
safe. Use open instead of the removed release command; blocked work must be
opened before claim, while finished work retries through a specific claim.
The tasks should establish guardrails that help an implementing agent avoid undesirable outcomes and speedrails that help that agent move quickly and confidently.
Follow a principle of parsimony. Add plan complexity only when it helps an agent decide, order, or verify work.
Bootstrap
- Expect
ergoto be installed. If it is missing, ask the user to install it. - Run
ergo --helpandergo quickstartto learn the tool. - Run
ergo where. If no backlog exists, confirm the repository root and runergo init.
Backlog Planning
Grill the user
Interview the user relentlessly until you reach a shared understanding about their intended task or goal. Map this as a design tree: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it.
Work the tree in rounds. The frontier is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled: the questions you can ask now without guessing at answers you haven't heard yet. Ask the whole frontier in one round: number each question and give your recommended answer. Then wait for the user's answers before the next round.
Each round the user answers reshapes the tree: settled decisions push the frontier outward and unblock questions that depended on them. Recompute the frontier and ask the next round. A question whose answer depends on another question still open in this round belongs to a later round, not this one.
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.
- 9d ago First seen · 130 lines · 73 tokens per session scan A d0ea1fd8a41c
ergo-backlog-planning is a skill published in the GitHub repository sandover/ergo (42 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 1,667 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.
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