tell-proof: Skill for Cursor

.cursor/skills/tell-recursive-improve/SKILL.md

tell-recursive-improve is a skill for Cursor from ashishpatill/tell-proof. It costs 81 tokens per session (919 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A repeated improvement process for Tell's templates, showcase images, and design skills. It compares a current best version with a proposed challenger, checks visual and measured results, and records lessons.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to evaluate previews, inspect contrast and layout, compare design alternatives, and preserve lessons from visual failures.
Why use it?
It helps prevent the same presentation or layout mistakes from returning in later sessions.

Skill for Cursor

Written for Cursor: installed under .cursor/.

This is ashishpatill/tell-proof's own configuration. It tells Cursor how to work on tell-proof itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything tell-proof configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to ashishpatill/tell-proof. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ashishpatill/tell-proof/master/.cursor/skills/tell-recursive-improve/SKILL.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ashishpatill/tell-proof

Made for: Cursor.

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 tell-recursive-improve

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ashishpatill/tell-proof/tell-recursive-improve/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashishpatill/tell-proof/tell-recursive-improve)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashishpatill/tell-proof/tell-recursive-improve"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ashishpatill/tell-proof/tell-recursive-improve/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for tell-recursive-improve

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashishpatill/tell-proof/tell-recursive-improve"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ashishpatill/tell-proof/tell-recursive-improve.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 919 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 $0.00081 $0.00919
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00460
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00184
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00092

Measured 6d ago against content hash df66f3299ffb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tell-recursive-improve 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 6d 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.

.cursor/skills/tell-recursive-improve/SKILL.md · 70 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 70 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Tell recursive improve (champion → challenger → learnings)

Compounding loop. Each session must leave one durable lesson and one measurable win. Do not brainlessly re-shoot the same nav strip and call it proof.

Harness

Gate Fail if
Eye — showcase Preview shows sticky nav + truncated type; empty right gutter; ghosted labels
Eye — template Best craft moment (figure / inverse / claim) not visible in posted shots
Eye — measured contrast pnpm eye:shell red, or chrome text looks "fine" only in a vision caption (vision ≠ WCAG)
Critique Matrix or target brief score regresses
Basics assertBasics red

Pass bar for showcase shots: the frame must include a primary craft beat (hero claim with figure start, or product plate, or inverse proof) — not chrome alone.

Pass bar for shell/chrome: run pnpm eye:shell (Playwright samples computed colors). Do not ship sidebar/rail changes on agent vision alone - captions miss ghost contrast (chrome:rail-ghost-contrast).

Loop (one cycle)

  1. Load learnings — read research/LEARNINGS.md before editing.
  2. Name the failure — one sentence (e.g. "index thumbs are 88px tall at scale 0.2 → only nav visible").
  3. Champion — current committed behavior.
  4. Challenger — smallest change that targets that failure (one surface: preview crop, gallery UI, or one siteKind).
  5. Eval — Playwright eye on /showcase + offering; pnpm research:critique if engine touched; typecheck.
  6. Promote or revert — keep only if eye + critique clear.
  7. Write the lesson — append to research/LEARNINGS.md with pattern key + anti-pattern.
  8. Screenshot contract — post gallery + at least one mid-page craft beat (or cinema reel frame), never nav-only.

Pattern keys (examples)

  • showcase:preview-gutter — fixed iframe scale left dead strip
  • showcase:nav-only-thumb — short crop at y=0
  • template:label-under-claim — absolute overfigure under type
  • template:sitekind-css-dead — siteKind rules trapped in wrong lean branch
  • template:skill-metadata-only — skills listed in routedSkills/hints but not hard-gated; require assertSkillWiring + RESEARCH_GATE.md every agency 2-build
  • chrome:rail-ghost-contrast — paper sidebar using dark-theme light text; require pnpm eye:shell

Read the full file on GitHub · 70 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. 6d ago First seen · 70 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A df66f3299ffb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tell-recursive-improve is a skill published in the GitHub repository ashishpatill/tell-proof (1 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 919 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 2026-09-03.

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