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 agentmods add skills/tu11aa/squadrant/karpathy-principlesnpx skills add tu11aa/squadrant --skill karpathy-principlesgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tu11aa/squadrantWrote 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/tu11aa/squadrant/karpathy-principles)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tu11aa/squadrant/karpathy-principles"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tu11aa/squadrant/karpathy-principles.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.00051 | $0.00812 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00026 | $0.00406 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00010 | $0.00162 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00081 |
Grade A, and why
karpathy-principles 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 5d 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 — 83 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Karpathy Coding Principles
Derived from Andrej Karpathy's observations on how LLMs fail at coding. Ported from forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills (MIT).
These four principles apply to every coding task — whether you are a captain reviewing a crew's work or a crew member writing code.
1. Think Before Coding
Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs.
- State assumptions explicitly — if uncertain, ask rather than guess
- Present multiple interpretations when ambiguity exists — don't pick silently
- Push back when warranted — if a simpler approach exists, say so
- Stop when confused — name what's unclear and ask
2. Simplicity First
Minimum code that solves the problem. Nothing speculative.
- No features beyond what was asked
- No abstractions for single-use code
- No "flexibility" or "configurability" that wasn't requested
- No error handling for impossible scenarios
- If 200 lines could be 50, rewrite
Test: Would a senior engineer call this overcomplicated? If yes, simplify.
3. Surgical Changes
Touch only what you must. Clean up only your own mess.
- Don't improve adjacent code, comments, or formatting
- Don't refactor things that aren't broken
- Match existing style, even if you'd do it differently
- If you notice unrelated dead code, mention it — don't delete it
When your changes create orphans:
- Remove imports/variables/functions that your changes made unused
- Don't remove pre-existing dead code unless asked
Test: Every changed line should trace directly to the user's request.
4. Goal-Driven Execution
Define success criteria. Loop until verified.
Transform imperative tasks into verifiable goals:
| Instead of... | Transform to... |
|---|---|
| "Add validation" | "Write tests for invalid inputs, then make them pass" |
| "Fix the bug" | "Write a test that reproduces it, then make it pass" |
| "Refactor X" | "Ensure tests pass before and after" |
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.
- 5d ago First seen · 83 lines · 51 tokens per session scan A 945f366b10bd
karpathy-principles is a skill published in the GitHub repository tu11aa/squadrant (2 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 51 tokens to every session and 812 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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