tools-visual-ascii-arch

tools-visual-ascii-arch is a skill for Claude Code from tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations. It costs 31 tokens per session (350 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for drawing software or service architecture as text-based box-and-arrow diagrams.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to map users, services, databases, queues, modules, and their data flows at different levels of detail.
Why use it?
It makes system structure and connections easy to read in terminals, pull requests, and architecture decision records when graphical tools are unavailable.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions AGENTS.md.

Part of the text-visualizations plugin — 5 skills, 3 commands shipped together

Good fit Use it to map users, services, databases, queues, modules, and their data flows at different levels of detail.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations/tools-visual-ascii-arch
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 tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations --skill tools-visual-ascii-arch
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install text-visualizations, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills, 3 commands.

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 tools-visual-ascii-arch

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations/tools-visual-ascii-arch/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations/tools-visual-ascii-arch)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations/tools-visual-ascii-arch"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations/tools-visual-ascii-arch/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 tools-visual-ascii-arch

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations/tools-visual-ascii-arch"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations/tools-visual-ascii-arch.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 31 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 350 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 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 $0.00031 $0.00350
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00175
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00070
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00035

Measured 9d ago against content hash 75be65d833b3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tools-visual-ascii-arch 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 9d 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/tools-visual-ascii-arch/SKILL.md · 39 lines

What it actually says

ASCII Architecture Mapping

Intent

  • Provide quick system overviews when graphical tools aren’t available.
  • Maintain multiple zoom levels (context, container, component) in text form.

Inputs

  1. List of components/services/contracts.
  2. Interaction types (sync, async, queues, blockchain events).
  3. Deployment/runtime context (devices, regions, environments).

Workflow

  1. Choose framing
    • Context diagram (users ↔ system).
    • Container diagram (services, DBs, queues).
    • Component diagram (modules, classes, contracts).
  2. Apply layout grid
    • Use +---+ boxes for nodes, |/- for edges.
    • Keep consistent spacing (2 spaces between layers).
  3. Annotate flows
    • Label arrows with protocols (HTTP, gRPC, L1 tx).
    • Use ~> for async events, => for sync calls.
  4. Layer metadata
    • Add footnotes for SLAs, owners, repos.
    • Indicate platform-specific components (e.g., [iOS], [Windows agent]).
  5. Version and reuse
    • Store diagrams in .factory/diagrams/<topic>.txt.
    • Link from AGENTS.md or skills that need system context.

Verification

  • Diagram fits within 100 characters width; no tab characters.
  • All components labeled; directional arrows show data/control flow.
  • Latest version referenced in related skills/docs.
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. 9d ago First seen · 39 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A 75be65d833b3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tools-visual-ascii-arch is a skill published in the GitHub repository tjboudreaux/cc-plugin-text-visualizations (2 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 350 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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