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 skills add bearded-illirian/trailmark --skill idea-firstgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bearded-illirian/trailmarkWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bearded-illirian/trailmark/idea-first)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bearded-illirian/trailmark/idea-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bearded-illirian/trailmark/idea-first/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bearded-illirian/trailmark/idea-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bearded-illirian/trailmark/idea-first.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to low
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- low Excessive Agency · line 128 Skill's behavior or capabilities extend beyond its stated purpose. Scope creep allows an agent to perform actions unrelated to its documented functionality, increasing the attack surface.Fix: Limit the skill's scope to its documented purpose. Remove instructions that enable the agent to perform actions outside its stated functionality.
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00117 | $0.02344 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00047 | $0.00938 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00023 | $0.00469 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00012 | $0.00234 |
Grade A, and why
idea-first 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 282 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Idea-First Protocol
Idea-first is the entry point of the self-organizing skill chain. Runs right after the task is created, before any technical analysis.
Why: without an explicit definition of the task type the next skills are built on guesses — arch-first decomposes a fix into blocks when audit-first was needed, library-first looks in a non-existent layer, the agent goes into code when habit design is required.
Idea-first closes this gap with a 5-10 minute dialog.
Key principle: idea-first does not read code — it determines the task type through dialog. Code is read by the next skills.
Input
A new task description just registered by the fast-track flow.
Output
idea-first-{N}.md fixing the task type (product / feature / fix) and scope, after 5-7 discovery questions and user approval.
Hands off to
habit-first (product), arch-first (feature), or audit-first (fix), based on the classified type.
Step 0 — Check task context
Ensure {log_dir} and {slug} are known.
If not — run resolver (list recent tasks, prompt user), then continue.
Cannot skip. Without {log_dir} the artifact will not be saved.
Step 0.5 — Hot-fix exception
If the task is an obvious small edit (one line, a typo, a known problem with a known fix) — skip all of idea-first and go straight to execute.
Signs of a hot-fix
| Sign | Example |
|---|---|
| One line / one value | Change timeout from 30 to 60 sec |
| Typo / formatting | Fix a typo in a button label |
| Known fix for a known problem | Remove a duplicate in SQL you added yourself |
| Time to complete < 5 minutes | — |
What to output
Looks like a hot-fix — one line / obvious edit.
Skipping idea-first → going straight to execute.
If more complex than it looks — say "stop" and we'll launch idea-first.
Then 3 short steps:
- Register block 1 in task_blocks — hot-fix = one task = one block.
atom_type='manual',source='idea-first'.INSERT OR IGNOREguards repeats. - Execute — Claude does the edit manually (Read / Edit / Bash). After completion — commit + push, remember
{last_commit_hash}. - Finalize via
$ship-firsttask-level — invoke WITHOUT{block_num}→ activates task-level mode: closes block 1, updates STATUS.md, appends sessions.md.
What ships with it
1 file 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.
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.
- 1mo ago Changed b7c7b77c8ac8
- 1mo ago First seen · 282 lines · 117 tokens per session scan A 042d79441d60
idea-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository bearded-illirian/trailmark (19 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 117 tokens to every session and 2,344 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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