Anti-Machinery Agent Skill

Use when software work creates, keeps, or approves supporting apparatus — tests, scripts, harnesses, flags, adapters, caches…

Context cost
1.4k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
2 files · 5.7 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
MITthe author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Use when software work creates, keeps, or approves supporting apparatus — tests, scripts, harnesses, flags, adapters, caches, compatibility paths, abstractions, debug surfaces, reports, process documents — and above all at task close, review, or cleanup, when deciding what may remain permanent. Apparatus earns permanence only through a continuing consumer, a recurring risk, or a bounded transition it carries. Do not use to decide whether the product change itself is correct or proven; pair with change-with-proof for that.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

productivity

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md5.4 kB · preview
--- name: anti-machinery ---
6# Anti-Machinery
7
8Everything built in service of a task — code structure, tests, scripts, flags, reports, process — is machinery with a carrying cost. Machinery earns permanence only through a real continuing need, held at the smallest boundary that contains it. That it helped once is never, by itself, a reason for it to exist tomorrow.
9
10## Two lives
11
12While solving, build whatever the problem demands — probes, one-off scripts, wide experiments, throwaway harnesses. Spend freely; keep it off the supported path and treat it as scheduled for deletion.
13
14When the task closes, the burden reverses: whatever remains must name its continuing need — the consumer that will invoke it, the recurrence it guards, or the transition it carries for a consumer that still exists, together with the observable condition that ends it. A stated end condition is not an end condition: wire it to something that will actually fire — a check that fails past the deadline, a scheduled removal, an expiry in the code itself. A comment naming a date will outlive the date. Sunk effort, "might be useful", reviewer comfort, and generalised safety name no need. When the need is real but smaller than the artefact, shrink the artefact to the need.
15
16The same rule governs building: structure justified by a predicted future consumer fails it in advance. Let the second concrete case reveal the boundary rather than guessing it.
17
18## Tests are machinery
19
20Discovery legitimately produces many tests; durable proof needs few. Keep one clear proof per distinct risk that can recur — a contract, a boundary, a fixed bug — at the cheapest seam where the proof would actually fail if the risk returned. A test that re-proves the same rule at an adjacent layer, encodes a disproved theory, or restates the implementation adds maintenance and noise but no failure it alone would catch; it leaves with the investigation that produced it. What stays is decided by one question — would this proof alone catch a real recurrence? — never by age or origin: each rule an artefact enforces is its own risk, and a proof born during an incident, or covering a rule adjacent to the one fixed, is still the only guard that rule has. Dropping a rule's only proof is deletion of proof, not of duplication.
21
22## Gates guard risks, not themselves
23
24Release gates, canaries, and CI checks carry the same burden as any machinery, plus one of their own: they must name not only the recurrence they guard but the ways they can fail while the product is healthy. A gate that blocks for reasons other than its risk is defective machinery — prefer moving the proof to a cheaper seam over repairing the gate in place. A focused test of a gate's distinct decision logic is ordinary proof, not recursion. When a gate needs apparatus that merely re-proves the same assertion or compensates for its own unreliable mechanism — a canary fix that needs a leak-proof harness, a fix for the fixer's fix — stop building. That recursion is evidence the proof sits at the wrong seam or relies on a mechanism too clever to trust; redesign the proof rather than reinforcing it.
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md884 words
Files2
LicenceMIT
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈140
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
1,285
on trigger
The instruction body and 1 supporting file, read only when the skill fires.
0.71%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 7% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

1.4k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Middling. Fine to keep on in a project where you use it weekly, worth unloading in one where you never do.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

2 files, 5.7 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md5.4 kB
  • agents/openai.yaml0.3 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 2 files you can review in full before installing. The MIT licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Anti-Machinery · 1.4k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/anti-machinery/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/anti-machinery" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/anti-machinery ] || { mv .claude/skills/anti-machinery "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/anti-machinery" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/anti-machinery"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add codingcossack/anti-machinery

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/anti-machinery/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/anti-machinery/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/anti-machinery" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/anti-machinery ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/anti-machinery "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/anti-machinery" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/anti-machinery" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/anti-machinery/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencecodingcossack/anti-machinery

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

Reviews

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