operating-discipline

operating-discipline is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from vindm/dotclaude. It costs 93 tokens per session (1,548 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of working rules for substantial coding, design, planning, debugging, refactoring, and review tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to understand a project before changing it, compare meaningful alternatives, carry work through to completion, and verify the result.
Why use it?
It helps prevent unclear requirements, unverified assumptions, incomplete work, unnecessary complexity, and poorly chosen solutions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the dotclaude plugin — 7 skills, 5 agents, 5 hooks shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/vindm/dotclaude/operating-discipline
Any agent
npx skills add vindm/dotclaude --skill operating-discipline
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vindm/dotclaude

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install dotclaude, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 5 agents, 5 hooks.

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 operating-discipline

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vindm/dotclaude/operating-discipline.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/vindm/dotclaude/operating-discipline)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vindm/dotclaude/operating-discipline"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vindm/dotclaude/operating-discipline.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 93 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,548 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00093 $0.01548
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.00774
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00310
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00155

Measured 3d ago against content hash 378797fd6fd7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

operating-discipline 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 3d 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/core/skills/operating-discipline/SKILL.md · 53 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 53 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Operating discipline

The universal method for doing any substantive task well. Project-specific values it refers to — the exact lint/test commands, the "fresh artifact" format, the "pure mechanics" boundary, the escalation trigger table — are supplied by the consuming project's local layer (its CLAUDE.md / .claude/); this skill states the method.

How you work — four principles, each with a test

  1. Understand before you build. Resolve ambiguity before writing code. Grill the user for what only they know (intent, taste, priorities); trace the code for what it can tell you — read the path end to end, name the real failure, don't hypothesis-spam. Push back on requests that won't produce something better. When no one's available to answer (unattended / CI / batch run), state assumptions up front and flag every decision taken on an assumption — never stall, never guess silently. The test: you can state the problem correctly — every assumption confirmed by the user or verified in code, none silent.

  2. Reason to the right solution. For any non-obvious choice, weigh 2–3 real alternatives with their trade-offs and recommend one. Elegant over expedient; slower-but-right over fast-but-shallow. One option is not a decision — it's a default in disguise. The test: the design is one you reasoned to, not the first thing that worked.

  3. Goal-driven, complete execution. Reframe imperatives into verifiable checks ("fix the bug" → "write a failing test, then make it pass"). Implement completely (best result, not smallest diff) but stay surgical on scope creep — complete the task, not the adjacent five. Reuse existing building blocks before writing new ones. Adversarial self-check, then verify: run this project's lint + test gates green, and produce a fresh artifact (screenshot / captured output / passing example) for anything user-facing. The test: the success criterion is stated and observably met.

  4. Depth by default, ceremony on demand. Every task except pure mechanics gets principles 1–3 in full. Depth ≠ ceremony — reason hard, but don't spin up agents, audit chains, or multi-step pipelines unless a trigger fires or the user asks. The test: analysis went deep, process stayed lean.

Read the full file on GitHub · 53 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. 3d ago First seen · 53 lines · 93 tokens per session scan A 378797fd6fd7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

operating-discipline is a skill published in the GitHub repository vindm/dotclaude (1 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 93 tokens to every session and 1,548 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

claude-md-review

Audit a CLAUDE.md file for the patterns that actually degrade Claude Code's output — vagueness, unnamed files, stale facts, and bloat. Use when asked to review, audit, improve, shrink, or fix a CLAUDE.md, and when a project's results feel inconsistent or Claude keeps rediscovering the same context.

wesammustafa/Claude-Code-Everything-You-Need-to-Know · 69 tokens

code-reviewer

Automatic code quality and best practices analysis. Use proactively when files are modified, saved, or committed. Analyzes code style, patterns, potential bugs, and security basics. Triggers on file changes, git diff, code edits, quality mentions.

alirezarezvani/claude-code-tresor · 54 tokens

git-commit-helper

Generate conventional commit messages automatically. Use when user runs git commit, stages changes, or asks for commit message help. Analyzes git diff to create clear, descriptive conventional commit messages. Triggers on git commit, staged changes, commit message requests.

alirezarezvani/claude-code-tresor · 55 tokens

test-generator

Automatically suggest tests for new functions and components. Use when new code is written, functions added, or user mentions testing. Creates test scaffolding with Jest, Vitest, Pytest patterns. Triggers on new functions, components, test requests, testing mentions.

alirezarezvani/claude-code-tresor · 55 tokens

api-documenter

Auto-generate API documentation from code and comments. Use when API endpoints change, or user mentions API docs. Creates OpenAPI/Swagger specs from code. Triggers on API file changes, documentation requests, endpoint additions.

alirezarezvani/claude-code-tresor · 48 tokens

readme-updater

Keep README files current with project changes. Use when project structure changes, features added, or setup instructions modified. Suggests README updates based on code changes. Triggers on significant project changes, new features, dependency changes.

alirezarezvani/claude-code-tresor · 49 tokens