A guide for choosing the smallest software-development workflow that fits the task. It covers paths such as clarifying requirements, writing a specification, implementing changes, testing, debugging, and reviewing code.

Use it when deciding which engineering process to follow, whether a task needs clarification, or how to approach a bug, feature, or review.

It helps avoid unnecessary process while still addressing uncertainty and reducing rework. It also identifies where to begin when the right workflow is unclear.

ask-matt — Skill for Codex by tsai09495

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 tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering --skill ask-matt

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering/ask-matt/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering/ask-matt)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering/ask-matt"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering/ask-matt/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering/ask-matt"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering/ask-matt.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 768 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00041	$0.00768
Opus 5	$0.00020	$0.00384
Sonnet 5	$0.00008	$0.00154
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00077

Measured 9d ago against content hash 1de4c36838cf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-matt 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.

plugins/matt-engineering/skills/ask-matt/SKILL.md · 63 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 63 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask Matt

Choose the smallest workflow that materially reduces risk or rework. Read routing-policy.md as the source of truth and consult optional-enhancements.md only when a heavier capability has a concrete payoff.

Response contract

Return:

one primary next skill or short flow;
why it fits the user's present uncertainty and scope;
what input or authorization it needs;
at most one optional enhancement, only when clearly useful.

Do not dump the entire catalog. Do not run the recommended skill unless the user also asked to proceed.

Main delivery flow

For work that needs clarification:

grill-with-docs → optional prototype → to-spec → optional to-tickets → implement → code-review

Skip unnecessary phases:

clear, single-session work can go directly to implement;
an already-defined behavior can use tdd directly;
review-only requests go directly to code-review;
a durable spec does not need tickets when one implementation context can hold the work.

On-ramps

Unknown-cause, flaky, or performance bug → diagnosing-bugs, then implementation and review after evidence identifies the fix.
Raw incoming issue or external PR → triage; tickets produced by to-tickets are already shaped and should not be triaged again.
Huge, foggy destination with dependent unknowns → recommend explicit wayfinder. Do not recommend it for a merely large but already clear feature.

Supporting disciplines

research for a bounded evidence question, preferably using primary sources.
prototype when a runnable artifact will answer a design question better than prose.
domain-modeling when project language is the problem.
codebase-design when module interfaces, depth, or seams are the problem.
improve-codebase-architecture for a survey of high-leverage structural opportunities.
resolving-merge-conflicts for an in-progress merge or rebase.
handoff only when context must travel to another task, directory or worktree, harness, collaborator, or mid-phase side fork.

Read the full file on GitHub · 63 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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.

agents/openai.yaml 105 B

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.

9d ago First seen · 63 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A 1de4c36838cf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-matt is a skill published in the GitHub repository tsai09495/matt-pocock-engineering (2 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 768 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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