variance-analysis

variance-analysis is a skill for Claude Code from sun2443/designer-skills. It costs 43 tokens per session (2,614 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of variance-analysis, Apache-2.0.

A financial analysis guide for explaining why actual results differ from a budget, forecast, or earlier period. It breaks a difference into drivers such as price, volume, and mix and supports waterfall-style explanations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for budget-versus-actual reviews, period comparisons, revenue and expense analysis, and written variance commentary for leadership.
Why use it?
It turns a single unexplained change into a clear account of the factors that caused it.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Part of the finance plugin — 8 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it for budget-versus-actual reviews, period comparisons, revenue and expense analysis, and written variance commentary for leadership.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/sun2443/designer-skills/variance-analysis
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.

Any agent
npx skills add sun2443/designer-skills --skill variance-analysis
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sun2443/designer-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install finance, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 8 skills.

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 variance-analysis

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sun2443/designer-skills/variance-analysis/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sun2443/designer-skills/variance-analysis)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sun2443/designer-skills/variance-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sun2443/designer-skills/variance-analysis/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for variance-analysis

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sun2443/designer-skills/variance-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sun2443/designer-skills/variance-analysis.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,614 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 5.1 $0.00043 $0.02614
Opus 5.5 $0.00017 $0.01046
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00009 $0.00523
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00261

Measured 13d ago against content hash 467db7de3fb1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

variance-analysis 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 13d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to variance-analysis — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

finance/skills/variance-analysis/SKILL.md · 267 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 267 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Variance Analysis

Important: This skill assists with variance analysis workflows but does not provide financial advice. All analyses should be reviewed by qualified financial professionals before use in reporting.

Techniques for decomposing variances, materiality thresholds, narrative generation, waterfall chart methodology, and budget vs actual vs forecast comparisons.

Variance Decomposition Techniques

Price / Volume Decomposition

The most fundamental variance decomposition. Used for revenue, cost of goods, and any metric that can be expressed as Price x Volume.

Formula:

Total Variance = Actual - Budget (or Prior)

Volume Effect  = (Actual Volume - Budget Volume) x Budget Price
Price Effect   = (Actual Price - Budget Price) x Actual Volume
Mix Effect     = Residual (interaction term), or allocated proportionally

Verification:  Volume Effect + Price Effect = Total Variance
               (when mix is embedded in the price/volume terms)

Three-way decomposition (separating mix):

Volume Effect = (Actual Volume - Budget Volume) x Budget Price x Budget Mix
Price Effect  = (Actual Price - Budget Price) x Budget Volume x Actual Mix
Mix Effect    = Budget Price x Budget Volume x (Actual Mix - Budget Mix)

Example — Revenue variance:

  • Budget: 10,000 units at $50 = $500,000
  • Actual: 11,000 units at $48 = $528,000
  • Total variance: +$28,000 favorable
    • Volume effect: +1,000 units x $50 = +$50,000 (favorable — sold more units)
    • Price effect: -$2 x 11,000 units = -$22,000 (unfavorable — lower ASP)
    • Net: +$28,000

Rate / Mix Decomposition

Used when analyzing blended rates across segments with different unit economics.

Formula:

Rate Effect = Sum of (Actual Volume_i x (Actual Rate_i - Budget Rate_i))
Mix Effect  = Sum of (Budget Rate_i x (Actual Volume_i - Expected Volume_i at Budget Mix))

Example — Gross margin variance:

  • Product A: 60% margin, Product B: 40% margin
  • Budget mix: 50% A, 50% B → Blended margin 50%
  • Actual mix: 40% A, 60% B → Blended margin 48%
  • Mix effect explains 2pp of margin compression

Read the full file on GitHub · 267 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. 13d ago First seen · 267 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 467db7de3fb1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

variance-analysis is a skill published in the GitHub repository sun2443/designer-skills (0 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 2,614 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to variance-analysis, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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