validation-harness-design

validation-harness-design is a skill for Claude Code from yfge/agent-harness-skills. It costs 35 tokens per session (733 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A design guide for repository validation: repeatable commands, test combinations, reports, and CI checks that show whether code changes are safe.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create doctor scripts, test matrices, smoke checks, JSON or JUnit reports, and validation gates for different kinds of changes.
Why use it?
It turns scattered or unclear checks into a shared process that coding agents and continuous integration can run and diagnose.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the agent-harness-skills plugin — 5 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to create doctor scripts, test matrices, smoke checks, JSON or JUnit reports, and validation gates for different kinds of changes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/yfge/agent-harness-skills/validation-harness-design
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 yfge/agent-harness-skills --skill validation-harness-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/yfge/agent-harness-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agent-harness-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 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 validation-harness-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yfge/agent-harness-skills/validation-harness-design/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/yfge/agent-harness-skills/validation-harness-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yfge/agent-harness-skills/validation-harness-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yfge/agent-harness-skills/validation-harness-design/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 validation-harness-design

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yfge/agent-harness-skills/validation-harness-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yfge/agent-harness-skills/validation-harness-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 733 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 $0.00035 $0.00733
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00367
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00147
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00073

Measured 12d ago against content hash 5c2c83c5dbbe, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

validation-harness-design 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.

skills/validation-harness-design/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Validation Harness Design

Overview

Define the smallest repeatable command surface that proves repository changes are safe enough for review.

This skill turns scattered checks into commands agents can run, CI can reuse, and failures can diagnose. For shared harness terms, see ../../references/harness-patterns.md; when validation commands are absent, use references/build-when-missing.md. For setup probes and CI-safe fallbacks, see references/environment-bootstrap.md.

When To Use

  • The user wants check_repo_harness.py, doctor.py, a test matrix, or CI gates.
  • Existing validation commands are scattered and agents do not know what to run for docs-only, interface, service, logic, or runtime changes.
  • JSON, JUnit, or artifact output is needed.

Inputs Needed

  • Project shape, main surfaces, existing test commands, and CI configuration.
  • Change types and the minimum gate for each type.
  • Whether runtime, packaged-environment, external-dependency, or manual checks are needed.

Execution Order

  • First: Inventory existing commands and CI to confirm what already works.
  • Then: Design a layered validation matrix and unified entrypoint.
  • Finally: Output the command table, report formats, CI wiring, and fallback rules.

Step-by-Step Process

  1. Search package.json, Makefile, scripts, CI workflows, test directories, and docs.
  2. Split validation into repo/docs, contracts, unit/type/lint, runtime, and external-dependency layers.
  3. If there is no shared validation entrypoint, bootstrap the minimum command surface from references/build-when-missing.md.
  4. For each change type, choose the minimum command and escalation condition.
  5. Design a unified entrypoint: check_repo_harness or doctor handles environment/structure, while focused commands test behavior.
  6. Design report output: stdout for humans, JSON/JUnit for CI and artifacts.
  7. Require skip/fallback reasons; do not describe degraded validation as full validation.

Checks

  • Runnable: commands work in a clean checkout or documented setup.
  • Layered: docs-only work does not require heavy runtime checks, and runtime changes do not stop at static checks.
  • Output: failures identify case, path, command, and artifact.
  • CI: local commands and CI logic are consistent.
  • Cost: minimum gates are fast, and heavy gates trigger only on higher-risk changes.

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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 · 89 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A 5c2c83c5dbbe

Subscribe to this mod's changes

validation-harness-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository yfge/agent-harness-skills (10 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 733 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 2026-08-31.

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