map-the-landscape

map-the-landscape is a skill for Codex from tamdogood/builder-essential-skills. It costs 116 tokens per session (1,833 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured guide for explaining the larger picture around a subject or software repository. It maps boundaries, layers, people, components, relationships, data flows, history, weaknesses, and unanswered questions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to understand a technology ecosystem, explain a repository, trace how information or value moves, identify important dependencies, and clarify what is still uncertain.
Why use it?
It removes the need to piece together a complex field or codebase from disconnected details. It gives you a mental model of how the parts fit and where to investigate next.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present.

Good fit Use it to understand a technology ecosystem, explain a repository, trace how information or value moves, identify important dependencies, and clarify what is still uncertain.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/map-the-landscape
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 tamdogood/builder-essential-skills --skill map-the-landscape
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills

Made for: 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 map-the-landscape

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/map-the-landscape/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/map-the-landscape)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/map-the-landscape"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/map-the-landscape/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 map-the-landscape

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/map-the-landscape"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/map-the-landscape.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 116 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,833 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00116 $0.01833
Opus 5 $0.00058 $0.00916
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00367
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00183

Measured 11d ago against content hash b729de98a8e6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

map-the-landscape 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 11d 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/map-the-landscape/SKILL.md · 205 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 205 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Map the Landscape

Build a useful mental model, not an exhaustive catalog. Reveal the structure that makes details make sense: what is inside the boundary, what sits outside it, which relationships matter, how value or data moves, why the landscape looks this way, and where uncertainty remains.

Set the Zoom

Infer these from the request and available context:

  • Subject: the topic, field, ecosystem, or repository to map.
  • Mode: topic, repository, or hybrid when a repo must be placed in its wider ecosystem.
  • Audience: the user's current knowledge and intended use.
  • Decision: what the map should help the user understand or do next.
  • Depth: snapshot, standard, or deep.
  • Time horizon: current state by default; add history when it explains the present.

Ask at most one clarifying question only when the subject or intended zoom is genuinely ambiguous. Otherwise state the chosen boundary and proceed. Use standard depth unless the user requests a quick overview or a deep study.

Evidence Discipline

Keep the map auditable without making it read like a research paper.

  • Label important statements as Observed when read directly from repository files, Sourced when supported by an external source, Inferred when deduced from evidence, and Unknown when evidence is insufficient.
  • For current or unstable topic claims, browse and cite authoritative sources. Prefer primary documentation, specifications, papers, repositories, release notes, and first-party material.
  • For repository claims, inspect code and local documentation before relying on summaries. Use rg --files, manifests, entry points, configuration, tests, and recent history to learn the system's own vocabulary.
  • Do not present directory names, dependency lists, search snippets, stars, or popularity as explanations. Translate evidence into relationships and consequences.
  • Distinguish the implemented system from stated intent. A README describes a promise; code paths and tests show what is enforced.

Read the full file on GitHub · 205 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 11d ago First seen · 205 lines · 116 tokens per session scan A b729de98a8e6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

map-the-landscape is a skill published in the GitHub repository tamdogood/builder-essential-skills (196 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 116 tokens to every session and 1,833 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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