arn-code-assess

A workflow skill for assessing a codebase against its documented coding, testing, and architecture patterns. It lets the user choose improvements and then coordinates specifications, plans, implementation, testing, and delivery.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for technical reviews, codebase health checks, technical-debt audits, pattern-compliance checks, and planning multiple improvements.
Why use it?
It gives a structured way to find technical issues and move selected improvements through the full development process. It requires an Arness setup and the required pattern documents.

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/appsvortex/arness/arn-code-assess
Any agent
npx skills add AppsVortex/arness --skill arn-code-assess
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AppsVortex/arness

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 133 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,867 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 $0.00133 $0.03867
Opus 5 $0.00067 $0.01934
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00773
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00387

Measured yesterday against content hash 7e1bb4e7c83f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

arn-code-assess 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 yesterday.

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.

plugins/arn-code/skills/arn-code-assess/SKILL.md · 391 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 391 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Arness Assess

Run a comprehensive technical assessment of the codebase against stored patterns, let the user prioritize findings, then orchestrate the full Arness pipeline (spec → plan → execute → test → ship) for multiple improvements in a single session.

This skill is a sequencer and decision-gate handler, like arn-planning. It MUST NOT duplicate sub-skill or agent logic. All pipeline work is done by the invoked skills and agents. This skill handles: scope selection, assessment orchestration, finding prioritization, multi-spec pipeline management, and progress display.

Prerequisites

Check for a ## Arness section in the project's CLAUDE.md. If missing, inform the user: "Arness is not configured for this project yet. Run /arn-assessing to get started — it will set everything up automatically." Do not proceed without it.

Additionally, verify that pattern files exist at the configured code-patterns path. At minimum, these must exist:

  • code-patterns.md
  • testing-patterns.md
  • architecture.md

If any required pattern file is missing, inform the user: "Pattern documentation is incomplete. Run /arn-assessing which will generate pattern docs on first use."

Decision Gates

The skill pauses at exactly 7 gates. Steps marked (auto) flow without stopping.

Gate When Question Options
G1 Entry "What would you like to assess?" Entire codebase / Specific area
G2 After assessment "Ready to prioritize?" Prioritize / Investigate further
G3 After prioritization "How should improvements be organized?" Bundle all / Separate specs / Arness suggests groupings
G4 After all plans generated "Plans ready. Proceed?" Approve all / Revise specific plan / Remove a spec
G5 Before each subsequent spec execution "Conflict detected" (conditional) Re-plan / Proceed / Skip
G6 After test results "Tests [pass/fail]. Proceed?" Ship / Fix and re-test / Abort
G7 Final "Ship it?" Commit, push & PR / Just commit / Not yet

Read the full file on GitHub · 391 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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. yesterday First seen · 391 lines · 133 tokens per session scan A 7e1bb4e7c83f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

arn-code-assess is a skill published in the GitHub repository AppsVortex/arness (33 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 133 tokens to every session and 3,867 once invoked, about $0.0007 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.