writing-user-docs

writing-user-docs is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from callstackincubator/agent-skills. It costs 168 tokens per session (1,086 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of writing rules for documentation that people read to learn how to use a tool. It covers tone, structure, scope, and which details to leave out.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing, editing, or reviewing user-facing documentation and in-app help.
Why use it?
It helps keep help articles, tutorials, README sections, and release notes clear and focused on the person using the tool. It also avoids inconsistent terms and unnecessary technical language.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it when writing, editing, or reviewing user-facing documentation and in-app help.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/callstackincubator/agent-skills/writing-user-docs
About the project

Callstack Agent Skills is a collection of instructions that gives AI coding assistants practical knowledge for building React Native applications. Developers use it for app development, performance, navigation, testing, CI, device automation, and migrations to React Native. The catalogue entries are the project's skills, rules, and instructions for compatible coding assistants.

callstackincubator/agent-skills · 1,672 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 callstackincubator/agent-skills --skill writing-user-docs
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/callstackincubator/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 writing-user-docs

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/callstackincubator/agent-skills/writing-user-docs/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/callstackincubator/agent-skills/writing-user-docs)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/callstackincubator/agent-skills/writing-user-docs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/callstackincubator/agent-skills/writing-user-docs/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 writing-user-docs

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/callstackincubator/agent-skills/writing-user-docs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/callstackincubator/agent-skills/writing-user-docs.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 168 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,086 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 16 Sept 2026
  • Snyk pass 16 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00168 $0.01086
Opus 5.5 $0.00067 $0.00434
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00034 $0.00217
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.00109

Measured 29d ago against content hash b631015f194c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-user-docs 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 29d 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.

skills/writing-user-docs/SKILL.md · 61 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 61 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

User-facing documentation

Write for the person using the tool, not the person who built it.

"User" means whoever uses the thing. For an app, that's an end user. For a library, it's the developer who installs it. Either way they are not implementing it, and the docs should reflect that.

Voice

Everyday English — the way you'd explain it to a colleague sitting next to you. Formality doesn't add authority, it just adds distance and words.

  • Second person, active, present tense. "You tap Save," not "the Save button should be tapped" or "the user will then be able to save."
  • Cut "just," "simply," "easy," "obviously." They add nothing when things work, and read as mockery when they don't.
  • No marketing adjectives. "Powerful," "seamless," "robust," "intuitive" — that's the author admiring the product. The reader is mid-task and doesn't care.
  • One term per concept, matching the UI exactly. If the button says Workspace, the docs never say "project" or "team space." Varying your vocabulary is good prose and bad documentation — every synonym reads as a new concept.

Scope: what goes in

Include only what the reader needs to use the tool. The default is to leave things out.

Implementation details stay out. Not the database, the queue, the framework, the algorithm's name, the internal service, the refactor it took to ship. The test isn't "is this technical?" — it's "will the reader be surprised, or make a wrong decision, without it?"

Observable behavior passes that test even when it sounds technical, and belongs in the docs: rate limits, offline behavior, what syncs and when, where files are stored, what happens on a conflict, what survives a reinstall. The machinery producing that behavior doesn't.

Concise means no filler, not short. Every sentence earns its place. A thorough troubleshooting section is still concise if none of it is padding — and a two-line page is bloated if one line is a welcome message. Cut preambles, restatements of the heading, and "in this article you will learn."

Read the full file on GitHub · 61 lines

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. 29d ago First seen · 61 lines · 168 tokens per session scan A b631015f194c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-user-docs is a skill published in the GitHub repository callstackincubator/agent-skills (1,672 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 168 tokens to every session and 1,086 once invoked, about $0.0007 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 2026-09-17.

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