Holstered's creator claims his released open-source pre-prompt hook uses a small decision model (Jev or a local model) to select the correct skill from a 581-skill Claude Code library — 29 of 32 in his own tests, abstaining when no skill fits — and replication or adoption by others would establish an external decision-model routing layer as a standard fix for skill-skip failures in large skill libraries.
state: resolvedheat: lowuncertainty: mediumknownscott: lowagent-harnesses skill-routing claude-code agent-skillstupe12334
What is this?
Holstered is an open-source pre-prompt hook for Claude Code whose author (tupe12334) claims a small decision model — TypeSafe's Jev or a local model — reads each prompt and injects the correct skill from a 581-skill installed library, abstaining when nothing fits; the 29/32 figure is self-reported and nothing in the supplied snippets surfaces Holstered or its author directly. What the snippets do show is that the surrounding pattern is already crowded: TypeSafe sells Jev as a hosted decision-only API (typed choice/score/noul calls, ~$0.00002/request, sub-second latency), and multiple independent projects — aleksvega/jev-skill-router, the claude-code-templates 'Jev Skill Suggestion' mod, raphael-liu/jev-skill, and the local-model Laya Router on MLX — wire exactly this routing layer into Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode. Several go further than the Holstered claim, withholding the skill listing from the model's context entirely (~5,500 tokens/request saved in one documented test) and adding prompt-injection scanning of the skill library. Independent validation remains thin, though: raphael-liu's controlled test put Jev at 66/80 exact correctness versus Codex's 78/80 at ~10× the latency and explicitly notes no Claude Code benchmark was performed — no snippet reports anything at Holstered's 581-skill scale.
Why it matters to Scott
Scott's own wikis already carry every load-bearing element of this design — the cheap-decision-layer-in-front-of-frontier-judgment split (ip:source.the-scout-and-the-senior-ebook, ip:concept.model-barbell), abstention as the no-match candidate (ip:concept.stand-pat), and just-in-time skill loading against library bloat (ip:concept.progressive-disclosure, ip:concept.context-bloat) — and the grounding shows Holstered is roughly the Nth independent implementation in a lineage the radar already tracks (Routed, Competence Gate, Verdict's Jev-compatible local adapter), not a consequential party newly arriving at his position. LOW because nothing challenges or extends the held claims: the 29/32 figure is self-reported and the grounding's lone validation datapoint (Jev 66/80 vs Codex 78/80 at ~10x latency, no Claude Code benchmark) belongs to a sibling episode, so independent replication at anything near 581-skill scale is the event that would upgrade this — until then it is the world agreeing with his documented architecture again.
ip:source.the-scout-and-the-senior-ebookip:concept.model-barbellip:concept.stand-patip:concept.progressive-disclosureip:concept.context-bloatdev:technology.claude-coderadar:routed-zero-token-skill-routerradar:competence-gate-local-tool-routingradar:verdict-local-jev-compatible-decisionsradar:agent-skill-bloat-gradingradar:concept.agent-skillsradar:concept.claude-coderadar:concept.model-routing
queries asked of Scott's wikis
- agent ignores installed skills large skill library skip failure
- small cheap model routing decision layer agent harness
- withhold skill listing context token savings prompt
- pre-prompt hook inject skill Claude Code workflow
- local model router latency cost tradeoff agent decisions
- abstain no-match fallback skill selection gating
Measured heat
no measured readings yet — the hourly heat pass fills this in
How the heat travelled
Evidence (3) — ⭐ canonical anchor
Interpretation history
2026-09-27T02:24:31Z
The awaited event arrived: SuperSahil10, unaffiliated with Holstered, independently shipped the same small-model skill-routing layer and reports 77%→93% correct selection at 1,000 skills (~140 ms laptop GPU) — replication at above-Holstered scale, so the hypothesis's replication condition is met and the episode absorbs. Whether this becomes a default/standard fix rather than a niche harness-tinkerer pattern is a concept-level question (model-routing, agent-skills) the radar already tracks via sibling cases, so this episode ends rather than idles at zero traction.
2026-09-27T02:22:37Z
evidence attached: reddit.post.1wr79wm — Independent second implementation of a small-model skill router with quantified gains (77%→93% at 1,000 skills) — exactly the replication the case's hypothesis awaits.
2026-09-26T16:38:17Z
origin walked (opencode/cheap-glm, conf 0.9): anchor reddit.post.1wqtqa2 -> echo.github.b46252f109 by tupe12334
2026-09-26T16:34:27Z
grounded: known/low — Scott's own wikis already carry every load-bearing element of this design — the cheap-decision-layer-in-front-of-frontier-judgment split (ip:source.the-scout-an
2026-09-26T16:26:56Z
case created — First-party release announcement of a working Claude Code skill-routing hook with a self-reported benchmark is a concrete harness episode even though the performance claim is unvalidated and the linked screenshot is bot-walled.
Decision trace
- 09-27 12:24resolveThe awaited event arrived: SuperSahil10, unaffiliated with Holstered, independently shipped the same small-model skill-routing layer and reports 77%→93% correct selection at 1,000 skills (~140 ms lapt
- 09-27 12:22attachIndependent second implementation of a small-model skill router with quantified gains (77%→93% at 1,000 skills) — exactly the replication the case's hypothesis awaits.
- 09-27 12:22propose_attachIndependent second implementation of a small-model skill router with quantified gains (77%→93% at 1,000 skills) — exactly the replication the case's hypothesis awaits.
- 09-27 02:38promote_anchororigin walk conf 0.9
- 09-27 02:34groundScott's own wikis already carry every load-bearing element of this design — the cheap-decision-layer-in-front-of-frontier-judgment split (ip:source.the-scout-and-the-senior-ebook, ip:concept.mode
- 09-27 02:26createFirst-party release announcement of a working Claude Code skill-routing hook with a self-reported benchmark is a concrete harness episode even though the performance claim is unvalidated and the linke