software-design-philosophy

software-design-philosophy is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica. It costs 125 tokens per session (4,072 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to keeping software understandable by controlling complexity through clear module boundaries, information hiding, and focused interfaces. A module is a unit of code that hides internal details behind a simpler public interface.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when designing modules or APIs, reviewing pass-through methods and shallow abstractions, setting a complexity budget, or deciding whether a refactor improves clarity.
Why use it?
It helps reveal when APIs, classes, or modules expose too much detail and make future changes risky. The aim is to keep necessary complexity contained and remove complexity that does not help users or maintainers.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it when designing modules or APIs, reviewing pass-through methods and shallow abstractions, setting a complexity budget, or deciding whether a refactor improves clarity.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica/software-design-philosophy
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 xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica --skill software-design-philosophy
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica

Made for: Claude Code, 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.

agentmods badge for software-design-philosophy

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica/software-design-philosophy/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica/software-design-philosophy)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica/software-design-philosophy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica/software-design-philosophy/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 software-design-philosophy

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica/software-design-philosophy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica/software-design-philosophy.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 125 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,072 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 $0.00125 $0.04072
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.02036
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00814
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00407

Measured 12d ago against content hash 1cf9f2969b1e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

software-design-philosophy 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 12d 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.

src/omac/agents/architect/skills/software-design-philosophy/SKILL.md · 232 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 232 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

A Philosophy of Software Design Framework

A practical framework for managing the fundamental challenge of software engineering: complexity. Apply these principles when designing modules, reviewing APIs, refactoring code, or advising on architecture decisions. The central thesis is that complexity is the root cause of most software problems, and managing it requires deliberate, strategic thinking at every level of design.

Core Principle

The greatest limitation in writing software is our ability to understand the systems we are creating. Complexity is the enemy. It makes systems hard to understand, hard to modify, and a source of bugs. Every design decision should be evaluated by asking: "Does this increase or decrease the overall complexity of the system?" The goal is not zero complexity -- that is impossible in useful software -- but to minimize unnecessary complexity and concentrate necessary complexity where it can be managed.

Scoring

Goal: 10/10. When reviewing or creating software designs, rate them 0-10 based on adherence to the principles below. A 10/10 means deep modules with clean abstractions, excellent information hiding, strategic thinking about complexity, and comments that capture design intent. Lower scores indicate shallow modules, information leakage, tactical shortcuts, or missing design documentation. Always provide the current score and specific improvements needed to reach 10/10.

The Software Design Framework

Six principles for managing complexity and producing systems that are easy to understand and modify:

1. Complexity and Its Causes

Core concept: Complexity is anything related to the structure of a software system that makes it hard to understand and modify. It manifests through three symptoms: change amplification, cognitive load, and unknown unknowns.

Why it works: By identifying the specific symptoms of complexity, developers can diagnose problems precisely rather than relying on vague notions of "messy code." The two fundamental causes -- dependencies and obscurity -- provide clear targets for design improvement.

Read the full file on GitHub · 232 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files 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.

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. 12d ago First seen · 232 lines · 125 tokens per session scan A 1cf9f2969b1e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

software-design-philosophy is a skill published in the GitHub repository xiaohei-info/oh-my-multica (26 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 125 tokens to every session and 4,072 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.