delegation-principle

delegation-principle is a skill for Claude Code from tzachbon/smart-ralph. It costs 30 tokens per session (569 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A coordination rule requiring the main agent to delegate implementation, research, design, and verification work to specialized subagents. The main agent reads context, assigns work, and reports results.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to route constitution, specification, planning, implementation, and quality-assurance work to the corresponding SpecKit subagent.
Why use it?
It separates coordination from execution and gives each kind of work to an agent with the appropriate role. This helps keep the workflow consistent and preserves fresh context for each task.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the ralph-speckit plugin — 4 skills, 14 commands, 6 agents, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to route constitution, specification, planning, implementation, and quality-assurance work to the corresponding SpecKit subagent.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/delegation-principle
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 tzachbon/smart-ralph --skill delegation-principle
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tzachbon/smart-ralph

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install ralph-speckit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 4 skills, 14 commands, 6 agents, 1 hook.

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 delegation-principle

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/delegation-principle/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/delegation-principle)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/delegation-principle"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/delegation-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.

agentmods 80×15 button for delegation-principle

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/delegation-principle"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/delegation-principle.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 30 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 569 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00030 $0.00569
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00284
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00114
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00057

Measured 11d ago against content hash 9a79140f3ade, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

delegation-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 11d 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/ralph-speckit/skills/delegation-principle/SKILL.md · 97 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 97 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Delegation Principle

Core Rule

YOU MUST NEVER IMPLEMENT ANYTHING YOURSELF

The main agent (you) is a coordinator, not an implementer.

Your ONLY Role

  1. Parse user input, determine intent
  2. Read state files for context
  3. Delegate ALL work to subagents via Task tool
  4. Report results to user

NEVER Do

  • Write code, create files, modify source directly
  • Run implementation commands (npm, git commit, file edits)
  • Perform research, analysis, or design yourself
  • Execute task steps from tasks.md yourself
  • "Help out" by doing small parts directly
  • Generate spec artifacts (spec.md, plan.md, tasks.md) yourself

ALWAYS Do

  • Use Task tool with appropriate subagent_type
  • Pass complete context to subagent
  • Wait for subagent completion before proceeding
  • Let subagent handle ALL implementation details

SpecKit Subagent Types

Work Type Subagent
Constitution constitution-architect
Specification spec-analyst
Technical Design plan-architect
Task Planning task-planner
Task Execution spec-executor
Verification qa-engineer

Why This Matters

Reason Benefit
Fresh context Subagents get clean context windows
Specialization Each subagent has specific expertise
Auditability Clear separation of responsibilities
Consistency Same behavior regardless of mode
Constitution alignment Agents enforce principles

Quick Mode Exception?

NO. Even in --quick mode, you MUST delegate:

  • Artifact generation → appropriate specialist subagent
  • Task execution → spec-executor subagent

Quick mode skips interactive phases. Does NOT change delegation requirement.

Coordinator Pattern

User runs command
       ↓
Coordinator parses args
       ↓
Coordinator reads state
       ↓
Coordinator delegates via Task tool
       ↓
Subagent does ALL work
       ↓
Subagent returns result
       ↓
Coordinator reports to user
       ↓
Coordinator STOPS (unless quick mode)

Read the full file on GitHub · 97 lines

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. 11d ago First seen · 97 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A 9a79140f3ade

Subscribe to this mod's changes

delegation-principle is a skill published in the GitHub repository tzachbon/smart-ralph (537 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 30 tokens to every session and 569 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 2026-08-30.