setup-index

setup-index is a skill for Claude Code from Abilityai/abilities. It costs 18 tokens per session (585 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workspace setup skill that creates a file index, a list of files and their details, using directory and exclusion choices supplied by the user.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to initialize an index for the current directory, the full workspace, or selected folders before searching files.
Why use it?
It gives file-search tools a starting map of the workspace and avoids indexing common generated or dependency folders when those are excluded.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; names the AskUserQuestion tool; positional $N argument.

Part of the agent-dev plugin — 47 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to initialize an index for the current directory, the full workspace, or selected folders before searching files.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/abilityai/abilities/setup-index
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.

Any agent
npx skills add Abilityai/abilities --skill setup-index
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Abilityai/abilities

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agent-dev, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 47 skills.

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 setup-index

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abilityai/abilities/setup-index/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/abilityai/abilities/setup-index)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/abilityai/abilities/setup-index"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abilityai/abilities/setup-index/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for setup-index

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/abilityai/abilities/setup-index"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abilityai/abilities/setup-index.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 585 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00018 $0.00585
Opus 5.5 $0.00007 $0.00234
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00004 $0.00117
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00059

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 840daf138ebe, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

setup-index 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 1mo 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.

plugins/agent-dev/memory-templates/file-index/setup-index/SKILL.md · 92 lines

What it actually says

Setup File Index

Initialize file indexing for this workspace.

Step 1: Ask Configuration Questions

Use AskUserQuestion to ask the user:

Question 1: "Which directories should be indexed?"

  • Options:
    • "Current directory only" - Index only the root
    • "All directories (Recommended)" - Full recursive index
    • "Specific directories" - Let me specify which ones

Question 2: "What should be excluded from the index?"

  • Options:
    • "Standard exclusions (Recommended)" - node_modules, .git, pycache, .venv, dist, build
    • "Minimal exclusions" - Only .git
    • "Custom exclusions" - Let me specify

Step 2: Create Index Configuration

Create memory/index_config.json with the user's choices:

{
  "root": ".",
  "exclude_patterns": ["node_modules", ".git", "__pycache__", ".venv", "dist", "build", "*.pyc", ".DS_Store"],
  "include_sizes": true,
  "include_dates": true,
  "last_indexed": null
}

Step 3: Generate Initial Index

Run the indexing command based on configuration:

find . -type f \
  ! -path "*/node_modules/*" \
  ! -path "*/.git/*" \
  ! -path "*/__pycache__/*" \
  ! -path "*/.venv/*" \
  ! -name "*.pyc" \
  ! -name ".DS_Store" \
  -exec ls -lh {} \; 2>/dev/null | \
  awk '{print $9, $5, $6, $7, $8}' | sort

Step 4: Write file_index.md

Create memory/file_index.md with format:

# File Index

Last updated: [ISO timestamp]

## Directory Tree

[tree structure]

## Files by Directory

### /path/to/dir
| File | Size | Modified |
|------|------|----------|
| file.txt | 1.2K | 2025-01-15 |

Step 5: Confirm Setup

Tell the user:

  • File index created at memory/file_index.md
  • Use /refresh-index to update
  • Use /search-files to search

Add to CLAUDE.md if it exists:

## File Index
- Index location: `memory/file_index.md`
- Refresh with: `/refresh-index`
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. 1mo ago First seen · 92 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A 840daf138ebe

Subscribe to this mod's changes

setup-index is a skill published in the GitHub repository Abilityai/abilities (12 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 585 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.

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