sharpen

sharpen is a skill for Claude Code, Cursor from backnotprop/pstack. It costs 36 tokens per session (171 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of sharpen, MIT.

A task-framing guide that clarifies the real goal, the needed detail, and how to check the result before work begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it with /sharpen to clarify an ambiguous request, choose sensible constraints, and include an independent check of the finished work.
Why use it?
It helps prevent solving the wrong problem or adding rules that make the task harder without improving the outcome.

Skill for Claude CodeCursor

Written for Claude Code and Cursor: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter, but also shipped in a Cursor plugin.

Part of the pstack plugin — 57 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it with /sharpen to clarify an ambiguous request, choose sensible constraints, and include an independent check of the finished work.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/backnotprop/pstack/sharpen
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 · 1,942 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 sharpen
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 57 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 sharpen

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/backnotprop/pstack/sharpen"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/backnotprop/pstack/sharpen.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 36 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 171 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 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 $0.00036 $0.00171
Opus 5.5 $0.00014 $0.00068
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00007 $0.00034
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00017

Measured today against content hash 6bcd73916696, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

sharpen 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.

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 sharpen — 1 line 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/sharpen/SKILL.md · 8 lines

What it actually says

Before starting, ask how a top expert would approach this task (their raw sources, their real methods, an outside check that the result is right), what the user is really after, and whether the task is over- or underspecified. Loosen constraints that don't serve the goal as readily as you add ones that do, and leave choices that are the user's to make open instead of deciding them. Fold in only what makes the work better, not bigger, but always keep one outside check that the result is right, without narrating the framing, then do the work. Don't hand back a rewritten prompt.

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 First seen · 8 lines · 36 tokens per session scan A 6bcd73916696

Subscribe to this mod's changes

sharpen is a skill published in the GitHub repository backnotprop/pstack (1,942 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 36 tokens to every session and 171 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 91% identical to sharpen, differing in 1 line, and is treated as a copy.

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