kata

A command that creates a small coding exercise with a problem description, a test file, and an empty implementation file. TDD, or test-driven development, means writing tests before the code that makes them pass.

In plain words
What is it for?
Practising test-driven development with exercises sourced from cyber-dojo, a collection of programming practice problems.
Why use it?
It provides a ready-made practice task, so developers do not have to design the exercise or prepare its test setup themselves.

Command for Claude Code

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 commands/wbern/agent-instructions/kata
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wbern/agent-instructions

Made for: Claude Code.

Per session 11 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 4,321 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 $0.00011 $0.04321
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.02160
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00864
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00432

Measured 2d ago against content hash fba292d49a65, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

kata 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 2d 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.

.claude/commands/kata.md · 462 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 462 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Kata: TDD Practice Challenge Generator

Generate a complete TDD practice setup:

  • CHALLENGE.md - Problem description
  • Test file with first test placeholder
  • Implementation file with empty function

General Guidelines

Output Style

  • Never explicitly mention TDD in code, comments, commits, PRs, or issues
  • Write natural, descriptive code without meta-commentary about the development process
  • The code should speak for itself - TDD is the process, not the product

Beads is available for task tracking. Use mcp__beads__* tools to manage issues (the user interacts via bd commands).

Plan File Restriction

NEVER create, read, or update plan.md files. Claude Code's internal planning files are disabled for this project. Use other methods to track implementation progress (e.g., comments, todo lists, or external tools).

User arguments:

Kata: $ARGUMENTS

End of user arguments

(This command is interactive - arguments are ignored)

Data Source

Exercises from cyber-dojo (60 exercises, stable 10+ years).

  • List: https://api.github.com/repos/cyber-dojo/exercises-start-points/contents/start-points
  • Fetch: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cyber-dojo/exercises-start-points/master/start-points/{NAME}/readme.txt

Kata Categories

<kata_categories> <by_difficulty> Fizz_Buzz, Leap_Years, Prime_Factors, Word_Wrap, Closest_To_Zero, Remove_Duplicates, Array_Shuffle, Friday_13th, Five_Weekends, Number_Names, Print_Diamond, LCD_Digits, Fisher_Yates_Shuffle Roman_Numerals, Reverse_Roman, Bowling_Game, Tennis, Anagrams, ISBN, Balanced_Parentheses, Calc_Stats, Recently_Used_List, Phone_Numbers, Combined_Number, Group_Neighbours, Longest_Common_Prefix, Yatzy, Yatzy_Cutdown, Harry_Potter, Vending_Machine, Count_Coins, 100_doors, Haiku_Review, ABC_Problem, Align_Columns, Best_Shuffle, Filename_Range, Unsplice, 12_Days_of_Xmas Game_of_Life, Mars_Rover, Mine_Sweeper, Mine_Field, Eight_Queens, Knights_Tour, Reversi, Poker_Hands, Levenshtein_Distance, Magic_Square, Saddle_Points, Tiny_Maze, Gray_Code, Monty_Hall, Number_Chains, Wonderland_Number, Zeckendorf_Number, Diff_Selector, Diversion, Reordering, Fizz_Buzz_Plus </by_difficulty>

Read the full file on GitHub · 462 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 462 lines · 11 tokens per session scan A fba292d49a65

Subscribe to this mod's changes

kata is a command published in the GitHub repository wbern/agent-instructions (168 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 11 tokens to every session and 4,321 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 2026-08-30.