improve-codebase-architecture

An investigation of a codebase to find structural changes that could make important behavior easier to understand, test, and maintain.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps analyze interfaces, dependencies, module boundaries, repeated complexity, and testing seams, then explain evidence, trade-offs, and next steps.
Why use it?
It identifies recurring architectural friction instead of treating each maintenance problem as an isolated issue.

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/stevesolun/ctx/improve-codebase-architecture
Any agent
npx skills add stevesolun/ctx --skill improve-codebase-architecture
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/stevesolun/ctx

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 454 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 $0.00040 $0.00454
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00227
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00091
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00045

Measured 2d ago against content hash 0a2c458a7a89, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

improve-codebase-architecture 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.

.agents/skills/improve-codebase-architecture/SKILL.md · 59 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 59 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Improve Codebase Architecture

Look for architectural friction that a focused structural change could reduce. Favor improvements that shrink interfaces, concentrate related complexity, and make important behavior easier to test and understand.

Scope the investigation

Follow the user's named subsystem or pain point. Otherwise use recent changes, repeated maintenance friction, test difficulty, or dependency structure to select a useful area. Read relevant domain language and ADRs when present so recommendations respect intentional boundaries.

Use the codebase-design skill when its deep-module vocabulary will sharpen the analysis. Explore independently in parallel only when the repository is large enough to benefit and the lanes do not duplicate work.

Find evidence

Consider:

  • interfaces that expose nearly as much complexity as their implementations;
  • behavior spread across modules that change together;
  • dependency seams that leak internal details;
  • testing that bypasses the real call path because no stable seam exists; and
  • repeated wrappers or indirection that add little leverage.

Treat these as prompts for investigation, not violations. Apply the deletion test where useful: would removing a layer concentrate complexity behind a better interface, or merely move it elsewhere?

Present candidates

For each material candidate, cite the affected code and explain:

  • the observed friction;
  • the structural change being considered;
  • expected benefits and tradeoffs;
  • evidence that the seam is real rather than hypothetical;
  • test impact and migration risk; and
  • conflicts with existing decisions.

Rank recommendations by evidence and likely leverage. Keep speculative ideas clearly labeled and avoid proposing a wide refactor solely for aesthetic consistency.

Use prose, a compact table, or diagrams according to what best communicates the relationships. When a visual HTML artifact is useful and authorized, load the HTML report guide.

Read the full file on GitHub · 59 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 59 lines · 40 tokens per session scan A 0a2c458a7a89

Subscribe to this mod's changes

improve-codebase-architecture is a skill published in the GitHub repository stevesolun/ctx (581 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 454 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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