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.
npx skills add The-Artificer-of-Ciphers-LLC/skills-from-the-artificer --skill parkinsons-lawgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/The-Artificer-of-Ciphers-LLC/skills-from-the-artificerWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/parkinsons-law)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/parkinsons-law"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/parkinsons-law/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/parkinsons-law"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/parkinsons-law.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00105 | $0.00818 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00042 | $0.00327 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00021 | $0.00164 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00011 | $0.00082 |
Grade A, and why
parkinsons-law 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 58 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Parkinson's Law
"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." — Cyril Parkinson, 1955
The core idea
Given more time to complete a task, people use it — through more elaborate solutions, more polishing, more scope, more second-guessing, or simply slower pace. The work doesn't have a fixed duration; it stretches to fill whatever container you give it.
Parkinson observed this originally in bureaucracies (a report that could be done in one day takes three when three are allocated), but the pattern is universal in knowledge work.
Why it happens
Effort adjusts to perceived time available. If you have a week, you approach a problem as a week-long problem. If you have a day, you find the 80% solution that matters.
Scope expands with available time. Extra time rarely stays empty — people find adjacent improvements, additional polish, more edge cases to handle, more documentation to write. This isn't laziness; it's often genuine value-adding activity. But the result is that the task always ends up using the time.
Perfectionism is proportional to deadline pressure. "Good enough" requires a definition of "good." When there's abundant time, "good enough" ratchets upward.
Meetings expand too. A meeting scheduled for an hour takes an hour. The same discussion, if you must resolve it in 30 minutes, usually resolves in 30 minutes.
How to use this for good
Set tighter deadlines intentionally. When you want a decision made, a design drafted, or a prototype built, giving less time forces prioritization. Parkinson's Law is a productivity tool when you use it deliberately.
Time-box rather than scope-box. Instead of "deliver feature X completely," try "spend two weeks on X and ship whatever is done." Time-boxing forces prioritization within the available time.
Use short sprints. Two-week sprints create more focus and delivery rhythm than month-long ones. Shorter cycles mean more frequent accountability and less opportunity for scope drift.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 58 lines · 105 tokens per session scan A 6a44d3dd2afb
parkinsons-law is a skill published in the GitHub repository The-Artificer-of-Ciphers-LLC/skills-from-the-artificer (6 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 105 tokens to every session and 818 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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