musk-algorithm

musk-algorithm is a skill for Claude Code from wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills. It costs 185 tokens per session (1,264 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An engineering decision framework with five ordered steps: question requirements, delete parts, simplify and optimize, speed up the work cycle, and automate. It is mainly for reviewing and cleaning up systems that already exist.

In plain words
What is it for?
Auditing, restructuring, cleaning up, or deciding whether to automate an existing system, with adapted guidance for building a new application.
Why use it?
Teams often optimize or automate unnecessary work before checking whether it should remain. The ordered review helps identify what to remove and simplify before investing in speed or automation.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the elon-musk-algorithm-skills plugin — 6 skills shipped together

Good fit Auditing, restructuring, cleaning up, or deciding whether to automate an existing system, with adapted guidance for building a new application.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills/musk-algorithm
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 wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills --skill musk-algorithm
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install elon-musk-algorithm-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills.

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 musk-algorithm

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills/musk-algorithm.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills/musk-algorithm)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills/musk-algorithm"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills/musk-algorithm.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 185 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,264 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 $0.00185 $0.01264
Opus 5 $0.00093 $0.00632
Sonnet 5 $0.00037 $0.00253
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00126

Measured 8d ago against content hash 7ae35e4d8ced, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

musk-algorithm 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 8d 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/musk-algorithm/SKILL.md · 81 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 81 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Musk Algorithm

Engineering decision framework derived from Elon Musk's 5-step algorithm, as articulated during the 2021 Starbase tour with Tim Dodd and curated in The Book of Elon by Eric Jorgenson (Simon & Schuster, 2026).

Scope: Primarily for reviewing and cleaning up existing systems. The algorithm's natural verbs (delete, simplify, accelerate, automate) assume something already exists. For greenfield application building, apply with translation (see below). For function-level coding behavior, pair with andrej-karpathy-skills.

Tradeoff: This framework biases toward deletion over preservation, and toward order over speed. For trivial tasks, use judgment.

Order is mandatory. Do not advance to a later step until the earlier steps are visibly complete in the conversation or diff. Optimizing or automating something that should not exist is the most common engineering failure. Each step skill has a Gate section that enforces this.

The five steps

Execute in strict order. Each step is its own skill. Follow the wiki links.

  1. [[musk-step-1-question-requirements]] - Every requirement needs a named human. Then challenge it.
  2. [[musk-step-2-delete-parts]] - Cut first. The 10% add-back rule calibrates the cut.
  3. [[musk-step-3-simplify-optimize]] - Only after 1 and 2. The most-quoted Musk failure: optimizing a thing that should not exist.
  4. [[musk-step-4-accelerate-cycle-time]] - Only after 3. Never speed up a process that should be deleted.
  5. [[musk-step-5-automate]] - Last. The Fremont rule.

How to use this skill

When invoked, do the following in order:

  1. Confirm scope with the user. What system, process, feature, or decision is in play. What is out of scope.
  2. Identify which step is appropriate to start at. Default is always step 1. The user may believe they are at step 3 or step 5. Push back. Verify steps 1 and 2 have happened.
  3. Load the corresponding step skill via its wiki link.
  4. Execute that step's protocol.
  5. Confirm completion criteria for that step before moving to the next.

Read the full file on GitHub · 81 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. 8d ago First seen · 81 lines · 185 tokens per session scan A 7ae35e4d8ced

Subscribe to this mod's changes

musk-algorithm is a skill published in the GitHub repository wezendy/elon-musk-algorithm-skills (9 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 185 tokens to every session and 1,264 once invoked, about $0.0009 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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