reference-layer

reference-layer is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from sonicfieldlabs/akouo. It costs 145 tokens per session (1,597 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research-mapping guide that works from a sound description, an earlier listening report, or a research question rather than listening to audio directly. It connects that material with concepts, methods, traditions, questions, and cautions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to develop essays, theses, workshops, projects, or fieldwork; find relevant sound-studies ideas; create research routes; and choose another listening approach for a follow-up analysis.
Why use it?
It helps place sound work in a wider field of study and shows what could be investigated next. It also highlights limits and responsible ways to interpret the material.

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/sonicfieldlabs/akouo/reference-layer
Any agent
npx skills add sonicfieldlabs/akouo --skill reference-layer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sonicfieldlabs/akouo

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote 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.

agentmods badge for reference-layer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sonicfieldlabs/akouo/reference-layer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sonicfieldlabs/akouo/reference-layer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sonicfieldlabs/akouo/reference-layer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sonicfieldlabs/akouo/reference-layer.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 145 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,597 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 $0.00145 $0.01597
Opus 5 $0.00072 $0.00798
Sonnet 5 $0.00029 $0.00319
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00160

Measured 3d ago against content hash 1db29ed699a3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

reference-layer 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.

skills/reference-layer/SKILL.md · 113 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 113 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

reference-layer

Purpose

reference-layer is the conceptual mapping ear of akoúō. It does not listen to the sound directly. It listens to the listening: it takes a sonic object, a prior listening output, or a research intent and maps it to concepts, methodologies, traditions, research routes, questions, cautions, and adjacent listening modes.

Like akouo-router, this is a meta-skill. The router decides how to listen before analysis; the reference layer decides where the listening sits in existing methods and what could responsibly come next in research.

When To Use

Use this skill for:

  • turning a listening report into research routes and questions
  • mapping a sonic object or method question to sound studies concepts and traditions
  • essay, thesis, project, workshop, and fieldwork method development
  • naming cautions before deeper interpretation
  • choosing adjacent listening modes for the next pass
  • the mapping step inside /reference, /study, and /method

Core Question

Which concepts, methods, traditions, questions, and cautions does this listening situation activate, and which adjacent ears should hear it next?

Conceptual Refinements

  • A reference is a route, not an authority: naming a concept or tradition opens a path of inquiry; it never proves an interpretation.
  • Methods and concepts answer to the object: every mapped route must stay tied to the actual sound, prompt, archive, or prior listening output.
  • Traditions are situated: sound studies categories travel with histories and exclusions; do not universalize Western or Northern framings as default method.
  • Cautions are part of the map: each conceptual route carries its own overreach risks, and the map must name them alongside the affinities.
  • The reference layer inherits the claim discipline: concepts and traditions belong to interpreted reasoning; they never upgrade a claim's evidence category.
  • References should distinguish a source of sound from a source of listening: apparatus, corpus, platform, archive, field relation, and inherited terminology can all condition the ear.
  • Several temporal passes are not one timeless object. When a route spans seasons, archives, revisions, or model generations, name those times and the cuts between them.

Read the full file on GitHub · 113 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 · 113 lines · 145 tokens per session scan A 1db29ed699a3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

reference-layer is a skill published in the GitHub repository sonicfieldlabs/akouo (10 stars, last pushed 22d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 145 tokens to every session and 1,597 once invoked, about $0.0007 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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