env-init

A one-time setup skill that turns a project into a managed working environment for AI-assisted development. It creates project-specific instructions, setup scripts, checks, and a starting technical-memory structure after the project has been registered.

In plain words
What is it for?
Inspecting a project's manifests, README, continuous-integration setup, and conventions, then generating AGENTS.md, worktree setup, local checks, intent tooling, and an Expert-memory skeleton.
Why use it?
It records how the project should be read, prepared, checked, and extended, so future coding assistants can work with the repository's actual conventions.

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/capitalone/context-specs/env-init
Any agent
npx skills add capitalone/context-specs --skill env-init
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/capitalone/context-specs

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 112 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,735 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 $0.00112 $0.03735
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.01868
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00747
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00374

Measured 3d ago against content hash e7d35799c07c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

env-init 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 3d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (assets/bootstrap-worktree.template.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/harness/env-init/SKILL.md · 295 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 295 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

env-init

Stand up a project as a harness environment. You are an autonomous installer: you write the artifacts end-to-end, explain the significance of each as you go, and gather everything onto a feature/env-init PR the human reviews and merges.

You are the second half of a two-command setup, and the split is the point — it is harness engineering in miniature:

  • context-specs add <path> already ran (deterministic CLI, tier 1): it registered this environment with the harness repo, symlinked the canonical skills/agents into .claude/ (gitignored), and wrote the managed .gitignore block. Everything a script can do without reading the project, a script did.
  • You do what needs judgment (Software 3.0, tier 2): every artifact below requires reading this project — its manifests, README, CI, conventions. Scan, generate, cite the evidence. Never invent a command you didn't see evidence for — ask instead.

The tier test, if you're ever unsure what belongs to you: could this be written without reading the project's code? Yes → it's the CLI's/harness repo's, leave it alone. No → it's yours to generate here.

Operating mode

Run the steps end-to-end without stopping for per-step approval — the user reviews everything in the feature/env-init PR. Your job while installing is to explain significance: for each artifact, one or two sentences on what it is, why it exists, and what would break without it. Lead with the why, then write the file.

Read first: references/mental-model.md (so you can explain what the harness is) and references/invariants-to-preserve.md (the rules nothing you generate may break). Load other references as each step needs them.

Stop-and-confirm points — the only interruptions:

  1. Secret-copying (bootstrap step) — before writing any cp line that touches a .env or credentials file: name the exact files, confirm copy direction (source → worktree, never reverse, never delete), get explicit consent.
  2. Reviewer choice — wires CI and billing; the user's call.
  3. The PR merge — after the PR opens, stop and wait for the human.

Read the full file on GitHub · 295 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. 3d ago First seen · 295 lines · 112 tokens per session scan A e7d35799c07c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

env-init is a skill published in the GitHub repository capitalone/context-specs (41 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 112 tokens to every session and 3,735 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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