estimating-and-contingency SKILL.md skillA
estimating-and-contingency from cbrock84/headcount is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add cbrock84/headcount/estimating-and-contingency@git:20260916.e72e404Pins git:20260916.e72e404 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- cbrock84/headcount
- Path
plugins/pmo/skills/estimating-and-contingency/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 2
- Latest version
- git:20260916.e72e404, committed Sep 16, 2026
- First version recorded
- Sep 1, 2026
- Size
- 5,038 bytes
- Repository stars
- 2,543
- License
- MIT
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.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file 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@sha256:61c342c8cbc62d7dThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260916.e72e404, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_4qvtggiylbvnpzmg)
3 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 2 versions of this file, between Sep 1, 2026 and Sep 16, 2026, about one every 15 days.
| 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 · 2,543 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-10-18 · 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
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.