structured-output

A method for getting machine-readable JSON from a language model and checking that it matches the expected structure.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when model output feeds another program, choosing schema-based tool calls or JSON modes where available and retrying a failed validation once.
Why use it?
It prevents stray prose, invalid formatting, or missing fields from breaking software that needs to parse the response.

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/archive228/loopkit/structured-output
Any agent
npx skills add Archive228/loopkit --skill structured-output
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Archive228/loopkit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 787 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 $0.00040 $0.00787
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00394
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00157
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00079

Measured 2d ago against content hash 76efd03f57ad, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

structured-output 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.

skills/structured-output/SKILL.md · 55 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 55 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Structured Output

Prompted JSON — "reply as JSON" in the system prompt — fails on ~2-8% of calls in the wild: stray prose before the object, trailing commas, unescaped quotes, code fences. That failure rate is fine for a demo and fatal for a loop that runs a thousand times.

The hierarchy — use the strongest that fits

  1. Tool use with schema (best) — declare a tool with a JSON Schema for its input. Force the model to call that tool. The API validates the arguments against the schema before you see them. Malformed JSON never leaves the model. Use this whenever the downstream is a real parser.

  2. JSON mode / response_format (good) — where supported. Guarantees a valid JSON object at the top level; does not guarantee schema conformance. Cheap upgrade over prompted-JSON.

  3. Prompted JSON with strict rules (fallback) — for models/tiers without tool use. Say "output ONLY the JSON object, no code fences, no prose", give an example, and validate on receive. Assume ~5% failure and handle it.

The validate-and-retry pattern

call → parse → if fail: retry once with the parse error appended → parse → if fail: hard fail
  • One retry, not a loop. If the model can't produce it in two tries, the schema is too complex or the prompt is wrong. Log and stop.
  • Feed the parse error back verbatim on retry — the model will fix specific issues ("expected string at line 3") that it can't guess from a generic "please try again".
  • Never silently coerce. If a required field is missing, fail loudly. Auto-defaults hide prompt bugs.

Schema design — keep it flat

  • Flat objects beat nested. Every level of nesting is another chance to hallucinate.
  • Enums over free strings. "severity": "high|medium|low" not "severity": "...".
  • Optional fields default to null explicitly in the schema. Don't ask the model to "omit if unknown".
  • No additionalProperties: true without a reason. If the model can add fields, it will, and they'll be inconsistent.

Read the full file on GitHub · 55 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. 2d ago First seen · 55 lines · 40 tokens per session scan A 76efd03f57ad

Subscribe to this mod's changes

structured-output is a skill published in the GitHub repository Archive228/loopkit (753 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 787 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.

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