why

A repository investigation into why code or a design decision exists, using version history and other available context. It separates facts recorded in the project from reasonable but unproven explanations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to trace a decision through commits, pull requests, issues, incidents, or documents and identify the evidence behind it.
Why use it?
Code usually shows what happens, but not the original constraints or trade-offs. This investigation helps explain unusual behavior, regressions, and thresholds without changing the repository.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/ykorovko/dotagents/why
Any agent
npx skills add ykorovko/dotagents --skill why
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ykorovko/dotagents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 46 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 976 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 $0.00046 $0.00976
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00488
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00195
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00098

Measured 2d ago against content hash 7d81a45ce766, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

why 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 2d 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/why/SKILL.md · 74 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 74 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Why

Investigate the motivation and constraints behind code. Separate what the record states from what the evidence merely suggests. Code can show what happens; it rarely proves why someone chose it.

Treat this as a read-only investigation. Do not modify files, external systems, tickets, or documents unless the user separately authorizes those changes.

Establish the question

Identify the code, behavior, decision, or threshold the user is asking about. Treat any explanation embedded in the question as a hypothesis, not a conclusion.

Anchor the investigation with:

  • Relevant files, line ranges, and symbols
  • Commits that introduced or substantially changed the behavior
  • PR, issue, incident, or document identifiers found in history
  • The time window in which the decision was made

Use repository-native history tools such as git blame, git log --follow, git show, and repository search. Use a hosting CLI or connector only when it is already available and authorized.

Search for evidence

Start with source control, then follow identifiers into other sources that are available and relevant:

  • Pull requests and code review discussions
  • Issue or ticket trackers
  • Design documents, ADRs, specifications, and postmortems
  • Team chat and meeting records
  • Runtime metrics, logs, traces, and incident timelines
  • Error tracking and release data
  • Product analytics or warehouse data

Read references/source-playbook.md to select the relevant source guides. Always use the code-archaeology guide for repository history, then read only the playbooks that match sources available to the current investigation. If the target looks defensive, also read the incident and postmortem guide.

Do not assume these sources exist or require connectors the environment does not provide. Do not install tools, request new access, or search unrelated private histories. Record unavailable sources as coverage gaps.

Read the full file on GitHub · 74 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. 2d ago First seen · 74 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A 7d81a45ce766

Subscribe to this mod's changes

why is a skill published in the GitHub repository ykorovko/dotagents (0 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 976 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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