poteto-mode

poteto-mode is a skill for Claude Code, Cursor from backnotprop/pstack. It costs 49 tokens per session (5,479 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of poteto-mode, MIT.

A set of rules for handling multi-step work, including a required task list and decision checks.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps guide planning, experiments, questions, and explanations during larger tasks.
Why use it?
It provides a consistent way to organize work and decide when to test an idea or ask for human input.

Skill for Claude CodeCursor

Written for Claude Code and Cursor: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter, but also shipped in a Cursor plugin. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions subagents; names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the pstack plugin — 59 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit It helps guide planning, experiments, questions, and explanations during larger tasks.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/backnotprop/pstack/poteto-mode
About the project

pstack is a collection of plain Agent Skills and engineering principles that guide AI-assisted software development across coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Cursor, and OpenCode. It is for developers who want reusable practices for tasks including testing, technical writing, debugging, review, and coordinating agent work. The catalogue entries are the project's skills, agents, and plugin.

backnotprop/pstack · 2,418 stars · on GitHub

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 backnotprop/pstack --skill poteto-mode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/backnotprop/pstack

Made for: Claude Code, Cursor.

Or install pstack, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 59 skills, 2 agents.

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 poteto-mode

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/poteto-mode/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/poteto-mode)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/poteto-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/poteto-mode/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 poteto-mode

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/poteto-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/poteto-mode.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,479 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. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 20 Oct 2026
  • Snyk warn 20 Oct 2026
How audits are shown
Origin 91% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00049 $0.05479
Opus 5.5 $0.00020 $0.02192
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00010 $0.01096
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00548

Measured today against content hash a606962c31e7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

poteto-mode 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 today.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 17 executable files (scripts/bootstrap.ts, scripts/check-plan.mjs, scripts/check-plan.test.ts, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

91% identical to poteto-mode — 68 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/poteto-mode/SKILL.md · 162 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 162 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Poteto mode

Bundled skills live at ../<name>/SKILL.md from this file, so put this file's absolute path in every poteto-agent prompt.

Non-negotiables

The Principles section below grounds every trigger. In your reply, name each principle that shaped a decision and the specific choice it changed. Cite only principles whose leaf SKILL.md you read this session.

Remaining triggers:

  • Nontrivial change, architecture decision, or "are we sure?" → the how skill.
  • About to AskQuestion on a "which approach", "how should I", or "what should this do" fork → classify it before you ask. If the answer is a fact you could observe by running something (behavior, timing, layout, output, perf, even whether an eval separates), it is not the human's to answer. Sketch it via the Prototype playbook (playbooks/prototype.md) and let the result decide. If the task is a read-only Investigation whose deliverable is a cited answer, stay in it and answer from the evidence rather than building a sketch. Reserve the question for a genuine product or preference call no experiment can settle. Under a full-autonomy grant, decide a call the grant covers, act on it, and report it, with no reply word and no offer. Under the grant, for a call only the operator can make, apply a default, report it with a full explanation, and say in plain words what the operator could tell you to do instead. The operator answers in their own words. Never give a shorthand token to type back. Gates the operator named and the Always-pause list in Autonomy still need the operator.
  • Any code → name the data shape first, and choose its organizing structure per principle-model-the-domain.
  • Code crossing a function boundary → the architect skill, parallel design exploration before implementing.
  • Parallel fan-out → the swarm skill for coverage matrices, races, gauntlets, and exploration partitions. Use arena for design or code bakeoffs with base selection and grafting.
  • Contested design → the interrogate skill (multi-model adversarial) before shipping.
  • Nontrivial multi-step → write the throughput checkpoint (Feature step 3).
  • Any prose surface, your reply to the user included → the unslop skill. Write the reply per Writing the reply. Agent-facing prose also follows your skill-authoring skill (create-skill in Cursor, see Harness).
  • Docs, RFCs, readmes, PR descriptions, or commit messages → the technical-writing skill (/technical-writing).
  • Before commit → the deslop skill from the cursor-team-kit plugin (/deslop). Without it, see Harness.
  • Before review → the no-comments skill (/no-comments).
  • Shipping UI / IDE / CLI → the matching control skill. cursor-team-kit publishes control-cli (CLIs and TUIs) and control-ui (browser / Electron / web UIs). Without them, see Harness. For bug fixes, reproduce first on the same surface yourself. Hand to the user only under the narrow Bug fix step 1 exception.
  • Running a benchmark, measuring perf yourself, or reporting a speedup or regression you measured → the benchmark-checklist skill before you report or act on the number.
  • Any PR-status request ("babysit this", "get it green", "address the bugbot comments", and most often "check on PR X" or "anything outstanding on X") → the Babysit playbook (playbooks/babysit.md), not Cursor's built-in babysit skill, whose description matches the same words. Never triggered by merely opening a PR. Declare its mode before polling. The playbook's step 1 owns the request-to-mode mapping. Reaching for drive inside a phase agent stops that agent finishing its turn.
  • Asked to land or ship a green stack → the Shipping playbook (playbooks/shipping.md). Green is not safe. Nothing gets armed before an independent per-PR verdict, and only the contiguous verified run from the root lands.
  • Bugbot or the agentic security review commented → skeptical posture. They catch real bugs and also file non-issues and nitpicks, so assess each on its merits and dismiss noise with a concrete reason instead of churning code. Triage fix / dismiss / ask per references/bugbot-triage.md.
  • Broken skill mid-task → fix it in its own PR. Don't block. Don't silently work around it.
  • Long, autonomous, or multi-phase work, or any task the user steps away from to review later ("going to bed", "trust it when i'm back", "/loop until X") → a decision trail via the show-me-your-work skill. Commit it when stakes need an auditable record. Keep it local otherwise.

Read the full file on GitHub · 162 lines

Files

What ships with it

45 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. today Changed a606962c31e7
  2. 5d ago Changed · +2 lines 432927d9f306
  3. 6d ago Changed 0ac1d8154f23
  4. 8d ago Changed 85b0f05ed474
  5. 12d ago Changed 923d54375f39
  6. 16d ago Changed · +4 lines 8a96abdde2ef
  7. 1mo ago Changed · +15 lines e4a8eb235f73
  8. 1mo ago First seen · 141 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 3b6793bdaead

Subscribe to this mod's changes

poteto-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository backnotprop/pstack (2,418 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 5,479 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 91% identical to poteto-mode, differing in 68 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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