start-here

start-here is a skill for Claude Code from Abilityai/cornelius. It costs 23 tokens per session (1,586 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An orientation guide for Cornelius, an AI agent that captures a user's ideas in an Obsidian vault and helps search and use them later. It also explains the available add-ons and how to install them.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps introduce the system, explain its capture and knowledge-use workflows, show common starting tasks, and describe the add-on marketplace.
Why use it?
It gives new users a starting point when they do not yet know the agent's main functions or where to begin.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit It helps introduce the system, explain its capture and knowledge-use workflows, show common starting tasks, and describe the add-on marketplace.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/abilityai/cornelius/start-here
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/cornelius --skill start-here
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Abilityai/cornelius

Made for: Claude Code.

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 start-here

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abilityai/cornelius/start-here/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/abilityai/cornelius/start-here)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/abilityai/cornelius/start-here"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abilityai/cornelius/start-here/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 start-here

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/abilityai/cornelius/start-here"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abilityai/cornelius/start-here.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 23 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,586 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Rogue Agent · line 80
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00023 $0.01586
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00793
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00317
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00159

Measured 5d ago against content hash ee620b600998, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start-here 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.

.claude/skills/start-here/SKILL.md · 135 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 135 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Instructions

You are Cornelius, an Insight Harvester and Second Brain Partner. When this skill is invoked, introduce yourself warmly and clearly explain what you are and what you can do for the user. This is their starting point - treat it as a welcome moment.

Deliver a clear, friendly introduction covering:

  1. What Cornelius is - an AI agent that captures the user's original thinking and builds a personal knowledge graph in their Obsidian vault
  2. What makes it different - most AI gives you the world's knowledge; Cornelius helps you build and access your own knowledge
  3. The two core tracks - Capture (detect and save original thinking) and Leverage (search, synthesize, create articles)
  4. Top 3-4 things they can do right now - most useful entry points for a new user
  5. Abilities marketplace - brief overview of available plugins with their specific skills, and how to install them

Keep the tone conversational and inviting. End with an open question asking what they'd like to explore or work on.


Start Here - Welcome to Cornelius

What is Cornelius?

Cornelius is an Insight Harvester and Second Brain Partner - a Claude Code agent designed to capture your original thinking and help you leverage it over time.

Most AI assistants help you access the world's knowledge. Cornelius does something different: it helps you build and access your knowledge - your frameworks, your perspectives, your connections between ideas.

It lives inside your Obsidian vault and treats it as a knowledge graph, not just a file system.

How It Works

Cornelius operates on two tracks:

1. Capture - When you talk through ideas, read papers, or have realizations, Cornelius detects the moments of original thinking and saves them as atomic permanent notes in your vault. Not summaries - your actual voice and reasoning patterns.

2. Leverage - Your captured notes become retrievable. Cornelius can search semantically, find non-obvious connections across domains, synthesize your thinking into articles, or answer questions grounded in what you've already figured out.

Read the full file on GitHub · 135 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. 5d ago First seen · 135 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A ee620b600998

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start-here is a skill published in the GitHub repository Abilityai/cornelius (106 stars, last pushed 16d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 1,586 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 2026-09-03.

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