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.
npx agentmods add skills/alivecontext/alive/settingsnpx skills add alivecontext/alive --skill settingsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alivecontext/aliveWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00084 | $0.01370 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00042 | $0.00685 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00017 | $0.00274 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00137 |
Grade A, and why
alive:settings 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 164 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Tune
Adjust how the ALIVE Context System works. Two levels: world-wide preferences and per-walnut config.
For creating new skills, rules, and hooks — that's alive:build-extensions.
The Spectrum
| Level | What it is | Example | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preference | Toggle on/off | "Turn off sparks" | .alive/preferences.yaml |
| Config | Walnut-level setting | "Nova Station should have a technical voice" | _kernel/config.yaml in the walnut |
The line: Toggle = preference. Setting = config. Process or capability = alive:build-extensions.
How It Routes
When the human says "I want X":
- Is it a toggle? → Write to
preferences.yaml. Takes effect immediately. - Is it walnut-specific? → Write YAML config to that walnut's
_kernel/config.yaml. Different walnuts, different settings. - Is it a repeatable process or new capability? → Route to
alive:build-extensions.
If unclear, ask once:
╭─ 🐿️ that sounds like a preference (toggle).
│ Add to preferences.yaml?
│ Or is this walnut-specific config?
╰─
Preferences
.alive/preferences.yaml — read by session-start hook via alive-resolve-preferences.sh.
Toggle Keys (default: all ON)
# Squirrel behavior
spark: true # The Spark observation at walnut open
show_reads: true # Show ▸ indicators when loading files
stash_checkpoint: true # Shadow-write stash to squirrel YAML every 5 items / 20 min
always_watching: true # Background instincts: people, bundle progress, capturable content
save_prompt: true # Ask "anything else?" before save
# World behavior
health_nudges: true # Surface stale walnut warnings proactively
feedback_nudges: true # Suggest /alive:feedback after errors or hook failures
# Permissions
full_permissions: true # All auto-approve permissions active (toggle off to require confirmation)
# Squirrel identity
squirrel_name: null # Named squirrel config (e.g., "oak", "hazel") — null for default
# Logging
action_logging: false # Log every tool call and action to .alive/action-log.yaml
# Display
theme: vibrant # vibrant | minimal | clean (companion app)
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 164 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A 416b37404265
alive:settings is a skill published in the GitHub repository alivecontext/alive (127 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 1,370 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
crit-cli
Use when an agent needs to author or reply to crit inline comments programmatically (including multi-agent workflows commenting on shared code/plans/docs/proposals), publish or unpublish a crit review with crit share, sync a crit review to or from a GitHub PR or GitLab MR, or read/interpret a crit review JSON file.…
crit
Review code changes, a plan, a live page (running dev server), or a local HTML file with Crit inline comments and structured human feedback. Use only when the user explicitly invokes /crit or directly asks to use Crit; a generic review request does not count.
crit-story
Author a crit story only when the user explicitly invokes /crit-story or directly asks you to generate a crit story. Do not infer this skill from generic review, PR, or diff-review requests.
cco-config
View and tune CCO's behavior thresholds — re-read warnings, cache staleness, prompt-coach length bands, and the /cco-pack budget cap.
cco-budget
Configure token budget limits, auto-compact settings, and view current budget status (model-aware — Opus 4.8 default, full 1M context at standard price).
cco-patterns
Share learned file patterns across a team — export an anonymized digest of what's usually waste/useful/co-edited, and import a teammate's so a fresh clone benefits day one.