adr-decision-drivers

adr-decision-drivers is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from zircote-plugins/adr. It costs 60 tokens per session (1,730 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to the factors that shape an architecture decision, such as required features, performance, security, cost, deadlines, and team skills.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to identify, group, prioritize, and document the requirements and constraints behind an architectural decision.
Why use it?
It helps make trade-offs explicit, so an Architecture Decision Record explains not only what was chosen but what influenced the choice.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the adr plugin — 12 skills, 7 commands, 3 agents 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/zircote-plugins/adr/adr-decision-drivers
Any agent
npx skills add zircote-plugins/adr --skill adr-decision-drivers
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zircote-plugins/adr

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install adr, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 skills, 7 commands, 3 agents.

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 adr-decision-drivers

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zircote-plugins/adr/adr-decision-drivers.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/zircote-plugins/adr/adr-decision-drivers)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zircote-plugins/adr/adr-decision-drivers"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zircote-plugins/adr/adr-decision-drivers.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 60 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,730 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 $0.00060 $0.01730
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00865
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00346
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00173

Measured 4d ago against content hash 2f24b5a90b84, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

adr-decision-drivers 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 4d 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/adr-decision-drivers/SKILL.md · 256 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 256 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

ADR Decision Drivers

Decision drivers are the forces, concerns, and requirements that influence architectural decisions. Identifying and documenting these drivers clearly is essential for creating ADRs that explain not just what was decided, but why.

What Are Decision Drivers?

Decision drivers are factors that:

  • Constrain the solution space
  • Prioritize certain qualities over others
  • Represent stakeholder concerns
  • Create tension requiring trade-offs

Categories of Decision Drivers

Category Description Examples
Functional What the system must do Features, capabilities, integrations
Quality Attributes How well system must perform Performance, security, reliability
Constraints Fixed limitations Budget, timeline, technology mandates
Business Organizational factors Cost, time-to-market, compliance
Technical Engineering considerations Maintainability, testability, complexity
Team Human factors Skills, capacity, preferences

Identifying Decision Drivers

Discovery Questions

Ask these questions to uncover drivers:

Functional Drivers

  • What must this system do?
  • What capabilities are essential vs nice-to-have?
  • What integrations are required?

Quality Attribute Drivers

  • What are the performance requirements?
  • How critical is availability?
  • What are the security requirements?
  • How important is scalability?

Constraint Drivers

  • What is the budget?
  • What is the timeline?
  • What technologies are mandated?
  • What regulations apply?

Business Drivers

  • What is the cost sensitivity?
  • How important is time-to-market?
  • What is the risk tolerance?
  • What competitive factors matter?

Technical Drivers

  • How complex can the solution be?
  • What is the expected maintenance burden?
  • How important is extensibility?
  • What testing requirements exist?

Team Drivers

  • What skills does the team have?
  • What capacity is available?
  • What are team preferences?
  • What training would be needed?

Read the full file on GitHub · 256 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 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. 4d ago First seen · 256 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A 2f24b5a90b84

Subscribe to this mod's changes

adr-decision-drivers is a skill published in the GitHub repository zircote-plugins/adr (5 stars, last pushed 18d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 1,730 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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