authoring-acceptance-probe

authoring-acceptance-probe is a skill for Claude Code from Acendas/shipyard. It costs 16 tokens per session (2,901 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for writing a runnable acceptance probe, meaning a small end-to-end check that confirms a task works through its intended wiring.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it while planning feature tasks, quick changes, or bug fixes. It helps define the test that must pass before work is considered complete.
Why use it?
It prevents tasks from being marked ready without a way to verify them. It also gives bug fixes a concrete regression check.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions subagents; names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is node bin/mytool.mjs new-subcommand --help | grep -q "synopsis line text".

Part of the shipyard plugin — 32 skills, 7 agents, 4 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it while planning feature tasks, quick changes, or bug fixes. It helps define the test that must pass before work is considered complete.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Acendas/shipyard
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/acendas/shipyard/authoring-acceptance-probe

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install shipyard, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills, 7 agents, 4 hooks.

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 authoring-acceptance-probe

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/acendas/shipyard/authoring-acceptance-probe.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/acendas/shipyard/authoring-acceptance-probe)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/acendas/shipyard/authoring-acceptance-probe"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/acendas/shipyard/authoring-acceptance-probe.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 16 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,901 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00016 $0.02901
Opus 5 $0.00008 $0.01451
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00580
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00290

Measured 7d ago against content hash 2ee873899eca, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

authoring-acceptance-probe scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 7d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

If the AC is "the new endpoint returns 201 with the created user's ID", the probe is the curl that proves it. If the AC is "the migration adds column X to table Y", the probe is a SQL query against `information_schema`.
plugins/shipyard/skills/authoring-acceptance-probe/SKILL.md · 218 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 218 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Authoring an Acceptance Probe

Render before asking. Before any AskUserQuestion, render the decision context as assistant chat text. Content that exists only in a Read result, a subagent/Agent return, or the question/option strings does not count as rendered (the UI shows a compact card) — restate it in chat first.

A probe is the smoke-test contract that proves wiring works end-to-end. Without one, a task cannot be dispatched in 2.0 — dispatching-task-loop refuses to run a task whose acceptance_probe: is missing or empty. So authoring the probe is part of authoring the task, not an optional polish step.

When This Applies

  • During /ship-sprint Step 3 (task decomposition), as you write each task file.
  • During /ship-quick scoping, before dispatching the change.
  • During /ship-bug fix authoring — the probe is the regression scenario.
  • During /ship-discuss only if the discussion produces a task spec ready to enter the backlog with a probe.

If a task is genuinely too speculative to author a probe for, that task isn't ready for execution. Either refine until it is, or mark it kind: research (no probe needed; deliverable is a findings doc).

The Authoring Question

Ask exactly this:

"What single shell command, run from a clean state against the merged change, would print observable evidence that the wiring works?"

If you cannot answer that question in one sentence, the acceptance criteria are too vague. Refine the criteria first, then return.

Source Material

A probe is derived from:

  1. Acceptance criteria in the task file's ## Acceptance Criteria section. Each AC describes an observable outcome; the probe demonstrates at least one of them happens.
  2. Technical Notes in the parent feature file. These often spell out the exact endpoints, function signatures, table columns, or CLI flags involved.
  3. config.md test commands — for the scoped test pattern that proves a unit slice ran. Useful only when paired with a wiring check, not as a probe by itself.

Read the full file on GitHub · 218 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. 7d ago First seen · 218 lines · 16 tokens per session scan A 2ee873899eca

Subscribe to this mod's changes

authoring-acceptance-probe is a skill published in the GitHub repository Acendas/shipyard (2 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 16 tokens to every session and 2,901 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.