using-drac-clusters

using-drac-clusters is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from chgagne/claude-skills-research. It costs 129 tokens per session (4,824 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A guide to using Digital Research Alliance of Canada high-performance computing clusters, which are shared systems for running large computations. It covers authentication, quotas, Slurm job scheduling, files, accounts, partitions, and GPUs.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to connect to clusters such as Narval or Trillium, find the correct resources, move files, and submit work within cluster limits.
Why use it?
It prevents common mistakes such as trying to compute on login nodes, using the wrong account or resource name, or overlooking the required multi-factor authentication.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit Use it to connect to clusters such as Narval or Trillium, find the correct resources, move files, and submit work within cluster limits.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/chgagne/claude-skills-research/using-drac-clusters
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 chgagne/claude-skills-research --skill using-drac-clusters
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/chgagne/claude-skills-research

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 using-drac-clusters

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chgagne/claude-skills-research/using-drac-clusters/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/chgagne/claude-skills-research/using-drac-clusters)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chgagne/claude-skills-research/using-drac-clusters"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chgagne/claude-skills-research/using-drac-clusters/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 using-drac-clusters

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chgagne/claude-skills-research/using-drac-clusters"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chgagne/claude-skills-research/using-drac-clusters.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 129 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,824 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00129 $0.04824
Opus 5 $0.00064 $0.02412
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00965
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00482

Measured 12d ago against content hash e82302ed4f6d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

using-drac-clusters scanned grade B 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 12d 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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

`SUDO_ASKPASS` globally for every GUI app, putting a dialog in front of `sudo -A`
using-drac-clusters/SKILL.md · 337 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 337 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Using DRAC Clusters

Overview

DRAC clusters are shared, MFA-gated, quota-bound Slurm systems. Three properties drive almost every mistake: you cannot authenticate on your own, login nodes are not for computing, and almost nothing is knowable without asking the cluster — accounts, partitions, GPU types and quotas differ per cluster.

Core principle: discover, don't assume. Every value below has a command that prints the truth. Run it once per cluster and cache it in the project's notes.

Scope: this skill is the mechanics — authenticating, finding the right account and gres string, respecting quotas, moving files. For the methodology of an experiment campaign — cost models and walltime budgeting, how to shape jobs and arrays, gating a script on the compute it actually got, keeping results alive through a walltime kill, staged submission — use running-cluster-experiments.

The MFA gate — read this before anything else

MFA is mandatory on DRAC and an agent cannot complete it. Non-interactive ssh works only by multiplexing over a ControlMaster socket the user already authenticated. Before concluding the cluster is down:

ssh -O check <cluster>      # "Master running (pid=...)" = usable

With no live master, every command fails identically with Permission denied (keyboard-interactive). That is not a transient error, a wrong key, or an outage. Retrying cannot fix it.

Do NOT engineer around the MFA prompt. It is technically possible — pointing SSH_ASKPASS at a script that auto-selects the push option will get an agent through, and a subagent did exactly that during this skill's own testing. Do not do it. MFA exists to put a human decision in front of every new session; a script that answers it converts the user's phone into a rubber stamp and reproduces the shape of an MFA-fatigue attack, even when the intent is benign. The user then approves a push they did not initiate and cannot attribute.

The gate is a stop, not an obstacle. Report the blocker and ask. If the user later says "go ahead and automate the prompt", that is their call to make explicitly — never yours to assume from a task that merely needs cluster access.

Read the full file on GitHub · 337 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. 12d ago First seen · 337 lines · 129 tokens per session scan B e82302ed4f6d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

using-drac-clusters is a skill published in the GitHub repository chgagne/claude-skills-research (4 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 129 tokens to every session and 4,824 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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