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 peter-principlegit 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/peter-principle)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/peter-principle"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/peter-principle/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/peter-principle"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/peter-principle.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 | $0.00094 | $0.00809 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00047 | $0.00404 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00019 | $0.00162 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00081 |
Grade A, and why
peter-principle 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 12d 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.
Peter Principle
"People in a hierarchy tend to rise to a level of respective incompetence." — Laurence J. Peter, 1969
The core idea
In most organizations, people are promoted based on performance in their current role. But the skills that make someone excellent in role N are often different from the skills required in role N+1. The result: people keep getting promoted until they reach a role they're not good at — and then they stay there. Everyone ends up at their level of incompetence.
Why this happens
Promotion criteria look backward, not forward. We promote people for what they've done, not what they can do next. A brilliant individual contributor gets promoted to tech lead because they write great code — but tech lead requires communication, delegation, and conflict resolution, not just coding skill.
Different roles require genuinely different skills. Engineering and management are different jobs. Coding and architecture are different jobs. Building a product and running a product organization are different jobs. The skills don't automatically transfer.
There's no graceful way back. Once promoted, stepping down feels like failure — for the person and for the organization. So people stay in roles they're not suited for, often becoming unhappy and underperforming.
Organizations often have no alternative path. If the only path to higher compensation is management, your best individual contributors will keep getting promoted into management — regardless of whether they want it or are suited to it.
What to do about it
Build dual career ladders. Create a senior individual contributor path that provides compensation and status equivalent to management. "Staff Engineer," "Principal Engineer," "Distinguished Engineer" — titles that signal seniority without requiring management. This lets excellent ICs stay in roles where they excel.
Promote for the next role, not the current one. Before promoting someone, assess whether they show the skills the new role requires — not just whether they're excellent in their current role. Have conversations about what the new role actually involves. Trial periods or acting roles help.
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.
- 12d ago First seen · 58 lines · 94 tokens per session scan A 50027f25db48
peter-principle is a skill published in the GitHub repository The-Artificer-of-Ciphers-LLC/skills-from-the-artificer (4 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 94 tokens to every session and 809 once invoked, about $0.0005 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.
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