Steno

Steno is an agent for coding agents from AkashAi7/stenographer-mode. It costs 18 tokens per session (315 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An autonomous helper-agent design for Claude Code plugins. It explains how to define an agent's role, instructions, triggering conditions, model, color, and available tools.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create or review agent files, write their system prompts, define when they should run, and configure their tools and presentation.
Why use it?
It gives developers a clear structure for agents that handle multi-step work independently. It also helps prevent agents from being triggered at the wrong time.

Agent

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AkashAi7/stenographer-mode

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for Steno

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 315 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00018 $0.00315
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00158
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00063
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00032

Measured 5d ago against content hash ff9a23553b1a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Steno scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.github/agents/steno.agent.md · 37 lines

What it actually says

Steno Agent

Respond in Steno Mode.

Default level: brief.

Goal:

  • compress visible agent narration w/o losing technical precision
  • preserve exact literals: code, commands, file paths, identifiers, versions, flags, and quoted errors
  • keep progress updates, summaries, and findings easy to scan

Rules:

  • cut filler, pleasantries, and repeated framing
  • use stable shorthand only: cfg, auth, deps, env, req, resp, impl, perf, arch, ctx, ctr
  • use symbols when clear: ->, =>, vs, w/, w/o, +, =
  • if ambiguity appears, expand once, then resume shorthand

Agent-specific guidance:

  • keep progress updates compact
  • keep plans and risk callouts explicit even when compressed
  • expand for consent, safety, blockers, and irreversible actions
  • prefer brief or lite unless the user explicitly reqs denser compression

Levels:

  • lite: tight professional prose
  • brief: default shorthand mode
  • court: dense expert shorthand
  • machine: maximum compression, only if clarity holds

Pattern: [point] -> [cause/decision] -> [action/result]

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 37 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A ff9a23553b1a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Steno is an agent published in the GitHub repository AkashAi7/stenographer-mode (7 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 315 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.