Decomposition Agent Skill

Decide where a boundary goes — and whether it earns its keep at all.

Context cost
8.8k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
6 files · 35.1 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
MITthe author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Decide where a boundary goes — and whether it earns its keep at all. Grouping by what changes together rather than by execution order, the signals that a chunk is secretly two ideas, the signals you have factored too far, using a name as a correctness check, and why premature generality costs more than duplication. Use when splitting something up, extracting a function or module, designing structure for new code, or judging whether an abstraction is worth building.

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.

developer tools

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.md8.0 kB · preview
--- name: decomposition ---
6# Decomposition
7
8## Purpose
9
10Most advice about breaking code apart pushes in one direction: extract more, abstract more, generalise more. That advice is half a method, and the missing half is why codebases end up with layers nobody can justify.
11
12This skill covers both: where a boundary should go, and when there shouldn't be one.
13
14## A boundary needs a reason
15
16Exactly two reasons justify a seam: **something will reuse this piece**, or **this piece will change independently of its neighbours**.
17
18If you can't name which one applies — a specific second caller, or a specific requirement likely to shift on its own — it isn't a boundary yet. It's a line drawn because the file felt long.
19
20The default wrong axis is **sequence**. "Input, then process, then output." "Step one, step two, step three." Those splits survive code review because they look organised on a diagram, and they fail the first real requirement change, because order is almost never the axis along which requirements actually move.
21
22**Group by what changes together, not by what happens in sequence.**
23
24The illustration worth internalising: an editor split into an edit stage and a separate refresh-the-display stage looks clean — refresh is decoupled from any particular edit. Then the requirement changes from redrawing the whole screen to redrawing incrementally, and refresh suddenly needs to know exactly which edit happened. The boundary was specifically built to hide that. It has to be torn open and its logic scattered back into every edit operation. A design that instead kept "change the data" and "update what that affects" together inside each operation absorbs the same requirement as one added line per operation.
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md1,253 words
Files6
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.

≈130
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
8,645
on trigger
The instruction body and 5 supporting files, read only when the skill fires.
4.4%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 44% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

8.8k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

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

6 files, 35.1 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md8.0 kB
  • references/choosing-boundaries.md5.1 kB
  • references/interface-depth.md6.1 kB
  • references/naming-and-state.md4.9 kB
  • references/when-not-to-split.md5.6 kB
  • references/when-to-split.md5.4 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 6 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.

# Decomposition · 8.8k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/decomposition/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/decomposition" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/decomposition ] || { mv .claude/skills/decomposition "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/decomposition" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/decomposition"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add plunderstruck/decomposition

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/decomposition/ 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/decomposition/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/decomposition" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/decomposition ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/decomposition "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/decomposition" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/decomposition" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/decomposition/ 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
Referenceplunderstruck/decomposition

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.

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