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 skills add alivecontext/alive --skill settingsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alivecontext/aliveWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivecontext/alive/settings)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivecontext/alive/settings"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivecontext/alive/settings/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivecontext/alive/settings"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivecontext/alive/settings.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
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 Excessive Agency · line 62 Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00084 | $0.01370 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00034 | $0.00548 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $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 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.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 164 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A 416b37404265
alive:settings is a skill published in the GitHub repository alivecontext/alive (130 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 1,370 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
cco-budget
Configure token budget limits, auto-compact settings, and view current budget status (model-aware — Claude 5 lineup, Opus 5.5 default fallback, full 1M context at standard price).
fresh-start
Continue in a new chat without losing anything — writes a compact handoff to paste into a fresh conversation. Use whenever the user wants to move to a new chat or conversation, hits usage limits, says replies got slow or Claude forgets earlier details, or the conversation has grown long.
token-check
Estimate how many tokens a pasted text, an attached file or the conversation so far takes, what it means for the context window and usage limits, and how to cut it. Use when the user asks how big something is in tokens, why they keep hitting limits, or whether a file is too large to send.
resuming-from-handoff
Use when user invokes /handoff-resume, says "pick up where we left off", "continue from last session", "what was I working on", or starts a session with a reference to prior work that may be captured in a previous handoff 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 and continue the interactive review loop 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.