downshift-effort
Skill4 starsChanged 9 days agoApache-2.0View on GitHub
Advice for the orchestrator on matching reasoning and verification effort to what a task puts at risk. Use when deciding how hard to think, how much to check, or what effort to give a subagent, with Downshift installed.
In this repository12 other files it gives its agents.
- AGENTS.mdAGENTS.md
- CLAUDE.mdCLAUDE.md
- llms.txtllms.txt
- downshift-layeringSkill
- architecture-coverageSkill
- downshift-auditSkill
- downshift-orchestratorSkill
- downshift-setupSkill
- downshift-squadSkill
- downshift-tuneSkill
- harness-engineerSkill
- ponytailSkill
The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
5 rules. About 0 are common, 5 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈5
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
0
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Distinctive: line 14
Ask two questions before you start: what breaks if this is wrong, and can it be undone cheaply?
- Distinctive: line 28
Do not claim success from a command you did not run.
- Distinctive: line 35
When two levels fit, take the higher one.
- Distinctive: line 37
Do not raise effort to look careful.
- Distinctive: line 38
Do not lower effort to save tokens on a high-stakes task.
≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
Effort follows the stakes
Spend care where a mistake is costly, and nowhere else. This skill is advice to you, the orchestrator. It never sets an effort value: you choose the model and the effort of every spawn, and Downshift only applies your choice within the project policy (owner decision O8).
1. Read the stakes first
Ask two questions before you start: what breaks if this is wrong, and can it be undone cheaply? Then pick one level.
| Level | Typical work | Effort | Verification |
| Mechanical and reversible | rename, format, boilerplate, a typo, a lookup | fast, low | a glance at the diff |
| Ordinary code change with tests | a feature slice, a bug fix, a refactor with coverage | medium | run the tests that cover the change |
| High stakes | auth, security, money, production data, or a claim the user will act on unchecked | high | check it directly before you report |
2. What each level asks of you
- Mechanical: act, do not deliberate. Skip plans and long explanations. A wrong result is cheap to see and cheap to revert.
- Ordinary: state the goal, make the change, run the relevant checks and read their output. Do not claim success from a command you did not run.
- High stakes: slow down. Read the real code or data instead of recalling it. Reproduce the behaviour, run the exact command, query the actual state, and report only what you saw. Say what you could not verify. A worker on this level gets a high effort and you read its diff yourself.
3. Rules of thumb
- When two levels fit, take the higher one.
- A claim the user will act on without checking is high stakes, even if the task looked small.
- Do not raise effort to look careful. Extra effort on a mechanical task is wasted tokens.
- Do not lower effort to save tokens on a high-stakes task. A wrong answer costs more than the check.
- Changing level mid-task is fine: if a small edit turns out to touch auth, move up.
4. Handing it to a worker
State the level in the brief and name the check that proves it: the exact command that must exit 0,
or the file and line a claim rests on. Pick the effort for the spawn yourself, using the
downshift-orchestrator skill and the providers tool for what the harness offers.
Inspired by an MIT-licensed skill, github.com/mmc7676/skills.
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Your trail
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Now do this for your own.
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