auto-frame

auto-frame is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from appautomaton/automaton. It costs 33 tokens per session (2,129 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A framing workflow that turns a software request into a bounded SPEC.md file, a written agreement describing the scope and constraints of the change.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps clarify objectives, constraints, risks, and evidence before producing a specification file.
Why use it?
It creates a durable contract for work that spans sessions and prevents planning or implementation from quietly expanding the request.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/appautomaton/automaton/auto-frame
Any agent
npx skills add appautomaton/automaton --skill auto-frame
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/appautomaton/automaton

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 auto-frame

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/appautomaton/automaton/auto-frame.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/appautomaton/automaton/auto-frame)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/appautomaton/automaton/auto-frame"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/appautomaton/automaton/auto-frame.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,129 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00033 $0.02129
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.01064
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00426
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00213

Measured 4d ago against content hash 1c5309b11101, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

auto-frame 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 4d 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.

skills/auto-frame/SKILL.md · 138 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 138 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

auto-frame

Framing controller. Turns a request into one bounded SPEC.md, running as much conversation as the request needs and no more.

First action: run node .agent/.automaton/scripts/get-context.mjs from the project root.

Preamble

auto-frame produces the canonical artifact: SPEC.md. No file means no completed frame. It does not write code, create PLAN.md, or proceed to planning.

Depth is chosen after reading, never before: the call needs the repo and the request in hand, so it cannot be made at the door.

Loading discipline: hold the objective, constraints, risks, and source evidence that keep the spec real. Avoid exhaustive tree walks. When a lookup would pull wide reads into context, dispatch the read-only automaton-librarian (see .agent/.automaton/references/LIBRARIAN.md): it returns evidence, you keep the decision. Never ask what the repo can answer.

Artifact discipline: SPEC.md is the reloadable contract, not the whole dossier. Layout and linking rules live in .agent/.automaton/references/ARTIFACT-LIFECYCLE.md (Progressive Disclosure).

Interaction: keep chat plain, in the user's words. Do not expose the internal labels below. Follow .agent/.automaton/references/FRAMEWORK.md (Asking The User).

Quality Gate

  • Make the objective observable.
  • Preserve the user's broader intent. Do not silently narrow scope.
  • Move implementation detail out unless it constrains scope.
  • Mark uncertain claims as assumptions.
  • Read references/quality.md before presenting alternatives or finalizing SPEC.md.

Do

Read The Request

Read the request, the conversation, and enough repo evidence to know what is already true. If a SPEC.md exists for this change, read it and preserve every ## Review: section.

Classify three axes and hold them internally:

  • Mode: Startup mode for customers, revenue, or market. Builder mode for side projects, learning, or open source. Content mode for writing, article, brief, deck, newsletter, documentation, or any prose where audience and voice matter.
  • Work scale: bug, feature, capability, or roadmap. Large is not roadmap. Capability-sized work stays one spec when it serves one coherent outcome. Roadmap-sized means multiple independently valuable outcomes that need decomposition.
  • Work shape: feature, refactor, parity, audit, migration, coverage, content, or mixed.

Read the full file on GitHub · 138 lines

Files

What ships with it

8 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 4d ago First seen · 138 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A 1c5309b11101

Subscribe to this mod's changes

auto-frame is a skill published in the GitHub repository appautomaton/automaton (21 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 2,129 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.