estimating-and-contingency skillA
estimating-and-contingency is agent-read markdown (skill) from cbrock84/headcount: Produces a cost or effort estimate someone can defend — decomposing the work, choosing between analogous, parametric and bottom-up methods, documenting the basis and its assumptions, expressing confidence as a range, and sizing contingency and management reserve separately. Use this to build an estimate, challenge one you have been handed, work out why estimates keep coming in low, or decide how much reserve a portfolio actually needs..
Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.
What the file says
# Estimating and contingency An estimate is a claim about an uncertain future. Most organizations treat it as a commitment made by whoever said the number, which is why estimates are padded, disbelieved, and padded again. ## Decompose before you estimate Estimate the work, not the project. Break it down until each piece is small enough that someone who would do it can picture doing it — usually a week or two of effort. Below that you are estimating noise; above it you are guessing. Two decomposition failures are worth naming. **Missing scope** is the larger one: integration, data migration, environments, testing, documentation, training, and the coordination overhead of everyone involved routinely go unestimated because nobody owns them. **Double-counted contingency** is the other: padding inside every task, then adding a reserve on top of the padded total. ## Pick the method that matches what you know - **Analogous** — scale from a comparable past effort. Fast, needs real history, and the comparison has to survive being stated out loud: what is genuinely similar and what is not. …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add cbrock84/headcount/estimating-and-contingency@git:20260916.e72e404mdr add cbrock84/headcount/estimating-and-contingency@sha256:61c342c8cbc62d7dPin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_4qvtggiylbvnpzmg)
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Versions
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| git:20260916.e72e404 latest | 2026-09-16 | e72e404 | 5,038 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260901.2cd102d | 2026-09-01 | 2cd102d | 4,699 B | A | view |
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (5038 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
cbrock84/headcount · 1,664 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-17 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_4qvtggiylbvnpzmg GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=cbrock84/headcount/estimating-and-contingency GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/61c342c8cbc62d7d92e12deef9b0e4547ccff3f4960413c0ada0fed4714ff974
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