improve-agent

A workflow for improving existing software agents by measuring how they perform, refining their instructions, and testing changes over time.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review an agent’s recent results, study user corrections, improve its prompts, and check whether changes make it more reliable.
Why use it?
It helps find repeated errors, inefficient tool use, inaccurate answers, and other weaknesses instead of relying on guesswork.

Command

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/wshobson/agents/improve-agent
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wshobson/agents
Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,896 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 $0.00000 $0.01896
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00948
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00379
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00190

Measured 2d ago against content hash 8e283c1bf580, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

improve-agent 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

plugins/agent-orchestration/commands/improve-agent.md · 320 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 320 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Performance Optimization Workflow

Systematic improvement of existing agents through performance analysis, prompt engineering, and continuous iteration.

[Extended thinking: Agent optimization requires a data-driven approach combining performance metrics, user feedback analysis, and advanced prompt engineering techniques. Success depends on systematic evaluation, targeted improvements, and rigorous testing with rollback capabilities for production safety.]

Phase 1: Performance Analysis and Baseline Metrics

Comprehensive analysis of agent performance using context-manager for historical data collection.

1.1 Gather Performance Data

Use: context-manager
Command: analyze-agent-performance $ARGUMENTS --days 30

Collect metrics including:

  • Task completion rate (successful vs failed tasks)
  • Response accuracy and factual correctness
  • Tool usage efficiency (correct tools, call frequency)
  • Average response time and token consumption
  • User satisfaction indicators (corrections, retries)
  • Hallucination incidents and error patterns

1.2 User Feedback Pattern Analysis

Identify recurring patterns in user interactions:

  • Correction patterns: Where users consistently modify outputs
  • Clarification requests: Common areas of ambiguity
  • Task abandonment: Points where users give up
  • Follow-up questions: Indicators of incomplete responses
  • Positive feedback: Successful patterns to preserve

1.3 Failure Mode Classification

Categorize failures by root cause:

  • Instruction misunderstanding: Role or task confusion
  • Output format errors: Structure or formatting issues
  • Context loss: Long conversation degradation
  • Tool misuse: Incorrect or inefficient tool selection
  • Constraint violations: Safety or business rule breaches
  • Edge case handling: Unusual input scenarios

1.4 Baseline Performance Report

Generate quantitative baseline metrics:

Performance Baseline:
- Task Success Rate: [X%]
- Average Corrections per Task: [Y]
- Tool Call Efficiency: [Z%]
- User Satisfaction Score: [1-10]
- Average Response Latency: [Xms]
- Token Efficiency Ratio: [X:Y]

Read the full file on GitHub · 320 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 · 320 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 8e283c1bf580

Subscribe to this mod's changes

improve-agent is a command published in the GitHub repository wshobson/agents (39,318 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,896 tokens. 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.