Modelchk
Size a task's run before spending it: the cheapest sufficient capability tier (fast...
Install
npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill modelchk -g -a claude-code -y- Repository
- LilMGenius/paperthin1.4k
- Category
- Engineering
- Updated
- 3d ago
- License
- MIT
- Context cost
- Lightabout 1,458 tokens
- Runs scripts
- No, instructions only
What it does
Size a task's run before spending it: the cheapest sufficient capability tier (fast, standard, frontier) and the reasoning effort within it, on a neutral scale that binds to whatever levels the model exposes. Use when work seems over- or under-powered, costly, ambiguous, or high-risk, or asks which model class and how much thinking is enough.
Size the run before you spend it: how strong a model, and how hard it should think.
modelchk is read-only and advisory. From one assessment it sizes the two dials that set a model's per-run cognitive spend, capability tier and reasoning effort. It does not choose, route, switch, pin, spawn, set, or require any concrete model or level.
Goal
From a single risk-and-complexity read, recommend two coordinates.
Capability tier, the cheapest sufficient class of mind:
fastfor local, mechanical, reversible work with cheap, complete verification.standardfor ordinary repo-grounded reasoning, multi-step drafting, normal coding, and conventional documentation or skill work.frontierfor architecture, high ambiguity, safety/security/privacy/data-loss risk, release-critical review, cross-domain scope, or work where one wrong assumption wastes a large run.
Reasoning effort, how hard that mind should deliberate. modelchk recommends the effort intent; resolving it to the active model's actual level, like choosing the model itself, is the executor's step, not this skill's. From least to most deliberation:
glance, minimal deliberation; take the direct path. (Resolves to the model's floor.)measured, ordinary, everyday deliberation. (The model's default, or the middle of its ladder when no default is named.)thorough, deliberate extra: work the alternatives and check the assumptions. (Above the everyday setting, short of the top.)exhaustive, maximal deliberation; exhaust the search and re-check the work. (The model's ceiling.)
The two axes are orthogonal, a bounded-but-fiddly task can be fast + thorough, a quick expert call frontier + glance, yet in most work they move together, parting only when a cheap task needs hard thinking or a strong model needs only a quick call. Effort buys deliberation, never capability, and more of it is not more correct.
