SmolVM: Skill for Claude Code

.agents/skills/readme-guidelines/SKILL.md

readme-guidelines is a skill for Claude Code from CelestoAI/SmolVM. It costs 52 tokens per session (698 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A set of rules for reviewing or writing README files, which are the main guides that explain open-source projects. It emphasizes easy onboarding, plain language, gradual detail, and focused code examples.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write, review, update, or check a README. It guides the order of sections, explains technical terms, and keeps each example focused on one idea.
Why use it?
It helps make project documentation understandable to both newcomers and experienced developers instead of forcing readers through dense or confusing instructions.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter. Also seen: installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

This is CelestoAI/SmolVM's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on SmolVM itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything SmolVM configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to CelestoAI/SmolVM. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestoAI/SmolVM/main/.agents/skills/readme-guidelines/SKILL.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CelestoAI/SmolVM

Made for: Claude Code.

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 readme-guidelines

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/celestoai/smolvm/readme-guidelines.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/celestoai/smolvm/readme-guidelines)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/celestoai/smolvm/readme-guidelines"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/celestoai/smolvm/readme-guidelines.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 698 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 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 $0.00052 $0.00698
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00349
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00140
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00070

Measured 8d ago against content hash 054c8805e9f2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

readme-guidelines scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 8d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

vm.run("curl $API_KEY")
.agents/skills/readme-guidelines/SKILL.md · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

README Guidelines

Review or write README content following these principles. The goal is easy onboarding for both newcomers and advanced users.

Core Principles

1. Progressive disclosure of complexity

Structure content so readers can stop at any point and still have a working mental model. Each section should be usable on its own:

  • Lead with the simplest outcome (one-liner, quickstart)
  • Add detail in subsequent sections
  • Advanced topics (integrations, internals, performance) come last
  • Never require reading ahead to understand what's in front of you

2. One concept per code example

Each code block should demonstrate exactly one idea. If a snippet requires the reader to understand two or more new things simultaneously, split it.

Wrong — introduces sandbox creation AND environment variables at the same time:

with SmolVM(env={"API_KEY": "secret"}) as vm:
    vm.run("curl $API_KEY")

Right — teaches sandbox creation first, env vars in a separate example:

with SmolVM() as vm:
    vm.run("echo 'hello'")

3. Jargon-free language first, depth second

Explain every concept as if talking to a first-year CS student before using technical terms. Then go deeper if the reader needs it.

  • Bad: "SSH host keys are accepted on first connection via TOFU"
  • Good: "SmolVM automatically trusts new sandboxes on first connection to keep setup simple. (This is called trust-on-first-use, or TOFU — the same approach your browser uses for new websites.)"

4. Introduce before you use

Never use a value, flag, or identifier in a code block without explaining where it comes from. If a command prints a session_id, show that command before any command that takes session_id as input.

Review Checklist

When reviewing a README, check each section against these rules:

  • Tagline: does it describe a single, concrete outcome?
  • Intro paragraph: can a newcomer understand it without prior context?
  • Quickstart: does it follow install → configure → first run, in that order?
  • Each code block: does it introduce exactly one new concept?
  • Each new identifier (<session_id>, <vm_id>): is it introduced before it's used?
  • Jargon: is every technical term explained in plain language on first use?
  • Sections: does complexity increase monotonically top-to-bottom?
  • Examples table: are entries grouped by audience (getting started vs. advanced)?
  • Footer: does it duplicate links that already appear at the top?

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 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. 8d ago First seen · 72 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 054c8805e9f2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

readme-guidelines is a skill published in the GitHub repository CelestoAI/SmolVM (882 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 698 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

ai-deploy

Deploy a generated project (one process or several) to agent-sandboxes with scale-to-zero: idle sandboxes pause and auto-resume (process restarted) on the next HTTP request. Use when asked to deploy, host, or preview generated code through the sandbox platform.

agent-sandbox/agent-sandbox · 59 tokens

e2b

Core E2B SDK knowledge — correct imports, namespacing, terminology, and API patterns. Activates automatically when working with E2B sandboxes, templates, or code execution.

agent-sandbox/agent-sandbox · 42 tokens

workflow-builder

Generates Python workflow files using the Operator workflow DSL. Knows all available patterns (classify-and-act, fan-out-and-synthesize, adversarial-verify, generate-and-filter, tournament, loop-until-done) and produces ready-to-run .py files saved to the workflows directory.

Jeomon/Operator-Use · 62 tokens

skill-creator

Create new skills, modify and improve existing skills, and measure skill performance. Use when users want to create a skill from scratch, edit, or optimize an existing skill, run evals to test a skill, benchmark skill performance with variance analysis, or optimize a skill's description for better triggering accuracy.

Jeomon/Operator-Use · 64 tokens

browser_harness

../../SKILL.md.

browser-use/browser-harness · 0 tokens

unbrowse

One-call web access for agents with cache-first API replay and browser capture on misses. Unbrowse passively learns first-party route DAGs while browsing, independently validates replay, and keeps remote sharing consented and fail-closed. Prefer it over WebFetch, curl, and browser loops.

unbrowse-ai/unbrowse · 60 tokens