temper

A guide for simplifying an agent workflow when it has more layers, agents, configuration, or optimization than the task requires.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for reviewing architecture, deciding whether multiple agents are needed, and removing unused abstractions or premature optimizations.
Why use it?
It helps identify unnecessary complexity before it makes the workflow harder to understand, maintain, or change.

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/sharpdeveye/maestro/temper
Any agent
npx skills add sharpdeveye/maestro --skill temper
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sharpdeveye/maestro

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 26 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 574 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 $0.00026 $0.00574
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00287
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00115
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00057

Measured 2d ago against content hash 1dce3625b7fd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

temper 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 2d 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.

source/skills/temper/SKILL.md · 81 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 81 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

MANDATORY PREPARATION

Invoke /agent-workflow — it contains workflow principles, anti-patterns, and the Context Gathering Protocol. Follow the protocol before proceeding — if no workflow context exists yet, you MUST run /teach-maestro first. Consult the agent-architecture reference in the agent-workflow skill for topology patterns and when multi-agent is justified.


Pull back from over-engineering. The most common mistake isn't building too little — it's building too much.

Over-Engineering Detection

Signs you've over-engineered:

  • Multi-agent for a single-agent problem
  • Premature optimization before you have performance data
  • Abstraction layers with one implementation
  • Configuration for things that never change
  • Evaluation loops on non-critical outputs
  • Framework before features

The Complexity Test

For each component:

  1. Is this solving a problem we actually have? (not "might have")
  2. Is this the simplest solution that works?
  3. Would removing this break anything? (if not, remove it)
  4. Can someone new understand this in 5 minutes? (if not, simplify)

Tempering Strategies

Collapse Unnecessary Agents

OVER-ENGINEERED: User → Classifier → Router → Specialist → Formatter → Checker (6 components)
TEMPERED: User → Single Agent with good prompt (1 component, same quality)

Remove Premature Abstraction

OVER-ENGINEERED: class AgentOrchestrator with 5 strategy interfaces
TEMPERED: async function runWorkflow(input) — direct, readable

Simplify Configuration

OVER-ENGINEERED: config.yaml (200 lines, 47 params, 3 inheritance levels)
TEMPERED: config.yaml (20 lines, essential params only, sensible defaults)

What NOT to Temper

  • Error handling — essential, not overhead
  • Logging — saves you when things go wrong
  • Input validation — prevents cascading failures
  • Core guardrails — safety is non-negotiable
  • The golden test set — how you know it still works

Recommended Next Step

Read the full file on GitHub · 81 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. 2d ago First seen · 81 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 1dce3625b7fd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

temper is a skill published in the GitHub repository sharpdeveye/maestro (415 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 574 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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