implementation-approach

A framework for choosing how to implement a software change after examining the existing code, its responsibilities, dependencies, history, and tests.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when planning an implementation, comparing approaches, or defining how the result will be checked.
Why use it?
It reduces the chance of choosing a strategy based on guesses or adding complexity that the change does not need.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the dev-skills plugin — 12 skills shipped together

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/shinpr/claude-code-workflows/implementation-approach
Any agent
npx skills add shinpr/claude-code-workflows --skill implementation-approach
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/shinpr/claude-code-workflows

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install dev-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 skills.

Per session 25 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,873 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 $0.00025 $0.01873
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00937
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00375
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00187

Measured 3d ago against content hash 182ac8b70d69, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

implementation-approach 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 3d 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.

dev-skills/skills/implementation-approach/SKILL.md · 167 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 167 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Implementation Strategy Selection Framework (Meta-cognitive Approach)

Meta-cognitive Strategy Selection Process

Phase 1: Decision-Sufficient Current State Analysis

Core Question: "What does the existing implementation look like?"

Analysis Framework
Architecture Analysis: Responsibility separation, data flow, dependencies, technical debt
Implementation Quality Assessment: Code quality, behavior-relevant test evidence, performance, security
Historical Context Understanding: Current form rationale, past decision validity, constraint changes, requirement evolution
Meta-cognitive Question List
  • What is the true responsibility of this implementation?
  • Which parts are business essence and which derive from technical constraints?
  • What dependencies or implicit preconditions are unclear from the code?
  • What benefits and constraints does the current design bring?

Stop when another current-state fact cannot change responsibility, reuse, option validity, total complexity, a contract, or verification.

Phase 2: Design Convergence

Complete these steps in order before selecting an implementation strategy:

  1. Existing-Surface Baseline: Form the simplest end-to-end path that delivers the current outcome through existing responsibilities. Explicit requirements and accepted decisions are binding; suggested mechanisms remain candidates.
  2. Evidence Check: Test that path against current requirements, verified constraints, observed in-scope problems, and evidence-backed material risks. Keep only the unmet conditions that can change the selected design.
  3. Targeted Comparison: For each unmet condition, test reuse, derivation from existing data, on-demand computation, or responsibility at the current caller or boundary before adding design surface. Compare viable choices by total complexity across the dimensions that materially differ: user decisions, settings, modes, concepts, outputs, persistent state, implementation paths, UX, runtime, implementation, testing, documentation, and maintenance. Select the lowest-total-complexity choice that satisfies the condition.
  4. Subtraction Check: Remove each proposed addition and re-test its governing condition. Retain it only when the confirmed outcome, a required boundary, or necessary proof becomes unmet.

Read the full file on GitHub · 167 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. 3d ago First seen · 167 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A 182ac8b70d69

Subscribe to this mod's changes

implementation-approach is a skill published in the GitHub repository shinpr/claude-code-workflows (675 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 25 tokens to every session and 1,873 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories