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.
npx agentmods add skills/backnotprop/pstack/technical-writingnpx skills add backnotprop/pstack --skill technical-writinggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/backnotprop/pstackWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00052 | $0.02627 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00026 | $0.01314 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00010 | $0.00525 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00263 |
Grade A, and why
technical-writing 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.
Copies of this mod
3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- technical-writing — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
- technical-writing — 97% identical, 2 lines differ
- technical-writing — 97% identical, 1 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 131 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Technical writing
The goal is writing a tired engineer understands on the first read. Four layers get you there, one question each: what kind of document is this, how do sentences address the reader, how much does each sentence carry, and can any sentence be read two ways. Apply all four.
Three rules sit above the layers:
- Cut every word that does no work. If the sentence survives without a word, the word goes. "In order to" is "to". "It is important to note that" is nothing.
- Use the short, everyday word. "Use", not "utilize". "Help", not "facilitate". "Do", not "perform". A long word has to buy its length with precision.
- When a rule makes a sentence worse, fix the sentence another way or leave it alone. The rules serve the reader. A sentence that follows every rule and sounds like a machine wrote it has failed.
The codebase is the word list. Write the real symbol, file, flag, or command name, not a synonym or a description of it.
Don't invent jargon. Use the words a developer would say out loud: "move", "delete", "a budget that only decreases", not "evacuate", "ratchet", or "endgame". A named pattern is fine when the doc says what it means the first time. Add new offenders to unslop's abstract-metaphor rule with their replacement.
Vary the rhythm
The layers decide what a document says and how much each sentence carries. A doc can obey all of them and still read machine-written: every sentence clipped short, no view anywhere, nothing specific.
- Mix sentence lengths on purpose. Short sentences land a point. Longer ones that take their time carry a fact with its condition or consequence.
- One thought per sentence does not mean one length per sentence. Split the sentence that carries two thoughts. Keep the long sentence that carries one.
- Have a view where the mode allows it. Explanation weighs trade-offs, so say what you make of them instead of listing pros and cons. Reference stays dry.
- Be specific over sterile. Not "schema changes can cause issues" but "a column rename fails the build".
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 131 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A bd0cb21034f4
technical-writing is a skill published in the GitHub repository backnotprop/pstack (165 stars, last pushed 13d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 2,627 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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