attribute

A skill for explaining how possible causes lead to an observed effect. It supports root-cause analysis, dependency mapping, and tracing a chain of consequences.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate bugs or incidents, map dependencies, assess candidate causes, and explain the mechanism behind an outcome.
Why use it?
It helps separate likely causes from symptoms and consider alternative explanations when something goes wrong.

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/synaptiai/agent-capability-standard/attribute
Any agent
npx skills add synaptiai/agent-capability-standard --skill attribute
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/synaptiai/agent-capability-standard

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 29 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,946 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 $0.00029 $0.01946
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00973
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00389
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00195

Measured 2d ago against content hash f8338c6fb143, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

attribute 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.

skills/attribute/SKILL.md · 262 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 262 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Intent

Establish causal relationships between observed effects and potential causes. This capability supports root cause analysis, dependency mapping, and causal reasoning for planning and debugging.

Success criteria:

  • Causes identified for observed effects
  • Causal strength estimated for each relationship
  • Causal mechanism explained
  • Alternative causes considered and ruled out

Compatible schemas:

  • schemas/output_schema.yaml

Inputs

Parameter Required Type Description
effect Yes any The observed effect to attribute
candidates No array Potential causes to evaluate
context No object Situational context for attribution
depth No string Analysis depth: immediate, chain, comprehensive

Procedure

  1. Characterize the effect: Understand what needs to be explained

    • Document the observed effect precisely
    • Note timing and circumstances
    • Identify what changed
  2. Identify candidate causes: Generate list of potential causes

    • Use provided candidates if available
    • Generate additional candidates from context
    • Consider proximate and distal causes
  3. Evaluate causal strength: Assess each candidate

    • Check temporal precedence (cause before effect)
    • Verify mechanism plausibility
    • Look for correlation evidence
    • Consider counterfactual (would effect occur without cause?)
  4. Trace causal chain: Map the path from cause to effect

    • Identify intermediate steps
    • Note amplifying or dampening factors
    • Document the causal mechanism
  5. Rule out alternatives: Eliminate unlikely causes

    • Document why alternatives are less likely
    • Note any confounding factors
    • Flag when multiple causes may contribute
  6. Quantify confidence: Assess attribution certainty

    • Rate strength of causal evidence
    • Note missing evidence
    • Identify what would confirm/refute attribution

Output Contract

Read the full file on GitHub · 262 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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 · 262 lines · 29 tokens per session scan A f8338c6fb143

Subscribe to this mod's changes

attribute is a skill published in the GitHub repository synaptiai/agent-capability-standard (4 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 29 tokens to every session and 1,946 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 2026-08-31.