Home / the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc / skills-from-the-artificer · GitHub

choose-boring-technology SKILL.md skillA

choose-boring-technology from the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.

Install it, pinned

mdr add the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/choose-boring-technology@git:20260530.3e17152

Pins git:20260530.3e17152 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.

Audit grade: A, 17 of 17 checks passed
Kind: SKILL.md skill
Repository: the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer
Path: choose-boring-technology/SKILL.md
Versions recorded: 1
Latest version: git:20260530.3e17152, committed May 30, 2026
Size: 3,582 bytes
Repository stars: 6
License: MIT

Apply the "Choose Boring Technology" principle when evaluating tech stack decisions, adding new tools or frameworks, proposing a rewrite, or debating between a familiar vs. cutting-edge approach. Use this skill whenever someone is considering adopting a new library, language, database, or service—even if they frame it as "should we use X?", "what tech should we pick?", or "is it worth trying Y?". This skill helps teams resist shiny-object syndrome and make grounded technology choices.

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

# Choose Boring Technology

> "Consider how you would solve your immediate problem without adding anything new."
> — Dan McKinley, 2015

## The core idea

McKinley's essay argues that every new technology you adopt is a "complexity token" you spend — and you only have a limited budget. Novel technologies bring unknown failure modes, thin internal expertise, and higher cognitive load. **Boring** technologies (well-understood, widely deployed, battle-tested) have predictable failure modes, rich documentation, broad community knowledge, and don't surprise you at 2am.

The law doesn't say "never adopt new tech." It says: be deliberate about when you do, and have a high bar.

## How to apply it

**Step 1 — Solve the problem with what you have first.**
Before evaluating any new option, ask: can you solve this with something already in your stack? A Postgres table instead of a new cache? A cron job instead of a message queue? The answer is often yes, and the boring solution is usually good enough longer than you expect.

**Step 2 — Budget your complexity tokens.**
…

Read the whole file at its exact version.

How to install

The exact contents, by fingerprint

mdr add the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/choose-boring-technology@sha256:b616751f4699d03d

The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260530.3e17152, 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.

Badge

[![mdr](https://markdownregistry.com/badge/art_ysboeccyrc3ekbka.svg)](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_ysboeccyrc3ekbka)

4 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.

Versions

The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on May 30, 2026.

version	committed	commit	size	audit
git:20260530.3e17152 latest	2026-05-30	3e17152	3,582 B	A	view

Audit of the latest version

A 17 of 17 checks passed. Fixed automatic checks with no AI involved, so the same checks give the same answer every run.

pass: Frontmatter block present
pass: Frontmatter declares a name
pass: Frontmatter declares a description
pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (3582 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

GitHub

the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer · 6 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-11-08 · branch main

API

GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_ysboeccyrc3ekbka
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer/choose-boring-technology
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/b616751f4699d03d5e54302c86ade302f839e58ca0f821f4b73f214e8839c151

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.

More from the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer

adr-phase-coverage SKILL.md skill

the-artificer-of-ciphers-llc/skills-from-the-artificer · adr-phase-coverage/SKILL.md · Use when a user needs to turn a design doc, ADR, RFC, or spec into a phased implementation plan — or verify that an…