self-improvement-loop

self-improvement-loop is a skill for Codex from ashermahonin/agentic-skills. It costs 72 tokens per session (716 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for fixing a repeatable problem in an AI agent system, such as choosing the wrong route, misusing a tool, applying bad instructions, or failing an evaluation. It changes prompts, skills, tools, memory, or checks—not the model's learned weights.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it after a failed check, routing mistake, tool-contract error, regression, or clear user correction when the problem belongs to the agent system.
Why use it?
It turns a specific, reproducible failure into a measured repair and checks that the fix does not break a nearby case. It is not intended for vague dissatisfaction or ordinary application bugs.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present.

Good fit Use it after a failed check, routing mistake, tool-contract error, regression, or clear user correction when the problem belongs to the agent system.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ashermahonin/agentic-skills/self-improvement-loop
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.

Any agent
npx skills add ashermahonin/agentic-skills --skill self-improvement-loop
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ashermahonin/agentic-skills

Made for: 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 self-improvement-loop

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ashermahonin/agentic-skills/self-improvement-loop.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashermahonin/agentic-skills/self-improvement-loop)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashermahonin/agentic-skills/self-improvement-loop"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ashermahonin/agentic-skills/self-improvement-loop.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 716 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00072 $0.00716
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00358
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00143
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00072

Measured 7d ago against content hash 057d9bfbe581, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

self-improvement-loop 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 7d 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.

agentic/skills/self-improvement-loop/SKILL.md · 71 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 71 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Self-improvement loop

Purpose

Correct a specific weakness in the system around the model. This event loop changes prompts, skills, routing, tools, memory, or evaluations; it does not train model weights.

Failure evidence

  1. Read references/improvement-loop.md.
  2. Save the resume point in the original task.
  3. Record the triggering event, expected behavior, available logs or checks, and smallest reproduction.
  4. Classify the failure: route, context, documentation, tool contract, prompt, memory, evaluation, permission, handoff, or implementation.
  5. Decide whether the fault belongs to the product or the agent system. Route ordinary code defects to implementation.
  6. Define one measurable improvement target and a stop condition.

Repair cycle

  1. Reproduce the failure and identify the first wrong decision supported by evidence.
  2. Compare the smallest plausible repairs when the cause is uncertain. Verify current external behavior before changing a technical contract.
  3. Change the narrowest durable surface: trigger description, route, procedure, reference, tool schema, context policy, memory rule, or evaluator.
  4. Re-run the reproduction and one nearby non-regression case.
  5. Add a behavioral regression check when it can catch the same failure class without matching preferred wording.
  6. Write a short project-memory note only when the lesson is likely to help a future task. Use the active equivalent of 53-agent-learning-log.md.
  7. Resume the original task from the saved point.

Event loop rules

  • Run one observe, analyze, repair, validate, remember, resume cycle for a failure class.
  • A new cycle needs new evidence, not a feeling that the previous repair was incomplete.
  • Keep the user's task moving; process improvement is not the primary deliverable.
  • Stop after two ineffective repairs for the same class and report the unresolved cause.
  • Never increase autonomy, permissions, retention, external access, or unattended execution as an implicit repair.

Read the full file on GitHub · 71 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. 7d ago First seen · 71 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A 057d9bfbe581

Subscribe to this mod's changes

self-improvement-loop is a skill published in the GitHub repository ashermahonin/agentic-skills (10 stars, last pushed 14d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 716 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 2026-08-31.

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