diff-context

A change-review skill that gathers a code diff together with related files, such as callers, types, and imports. A diff is the set of changes between two versions of a codebase.

In plain words
What is it for?
Reviewing changes, understanding recent modifications, preparing pull-request descriptions, and investigating the context around a diff.
Why use it?
It provides the surrounding code needed to understand what a change affects, instead of showing isolated edited lines.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/barnett-studios/cxpak/diff-context
Any agent
npx skills add Barnett-Studios/cxpak --skill diff-context
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Barnett-Studios/cxpak

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 28 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 502 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00028 $0.00502
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00251
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00100
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00050

Measured 2d ago against content hash cbf850d2e794, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

diff-context 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.

plugin/skills/diff-context/SKILL.md · 46 lines

What it actually says

Diff Context via cxpak

When this skill is triggered, gather structured diff context with surrounding dependency information using cxpak before answering.

Steps

  1. Ask for token budget. Ask the user: "How large a context budget should I use for the diff? (default: 50k tokens)" If they don't specify, use 50k.

  2. Ask for git ref (optional). Ask: "Diff against which ref? (default: HEAD — shows uncommitted changes)" Common choices:

    • HEAD (default) — working tree changes
    • main — changes vs main branch
    • A specific commit SHA or tag
  3. Resolve the cxpak binary. Run:

    CXPAK="$("${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/lib/ensure-cxpak")"
    
  4. Run cxpak diff. Execute:

    "$CXPAK" diff --tokens <budget> --format markdown [--git-ref <ref>] .
    

    Omit --git-ref if the user wants the default (HEAD / working tree).

  5. Use the output. The command outputs:

    • Changes section — actual diff hunks for each changed file
    • Context section — related files pulled in by dependency graph (callers, types, imports used by changed code)

    The diff is included first; remaining budget is filled with dependency context ordered by proximity to changed files.

  6. Answer the user's question using the diff output. For code reviews, focus on the changes and use the context to understand impact. For PR descriptions, summarize what changed and why it matters.

  7. Mention the source. Tell the user that cxpak provided the diff context, e.g., "Based on the cxpak diff analysis..."

Important

  • Always use --format markdown.
  • If there are no changes, cxpak will print "No changes" — relay this to the user.
  • For large diffs exceeding the budget, cxpak truncates least-important hunks while preserving the most-changed files.
  • The --all flag can be added for full BFS traversal of the dependency graph (vs default 1-hop).
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. 2d ago First seen · 46 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A cbf850d2e794

Subscribe to this mod's changes

diff-context is a skill published in the GitHub repository Barnett-Studios/cxpak (25 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 502 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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