houdini-docs-local

houdini-docs-local is a skill for Claude Code from chordee/houdini-tools. It costs 74 tokens per session (1,027 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A local reference workflow for finding Houdini documentation on the computer where Houdini is installed. Houdini is software for creating and simulating 3D graphics, and HOM, VEX, and HScript are its scripting systems.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to look up Houdini methods, functions, expressions, commands, or node parameters. It maps a SideFX documentation path to the matching local help archive.
Why use it?
It avoids relying on the internet when SideFX documentation is blocked or slow. It also finds documentation for the installed Houdini version rather than automatically using the newest release.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the houdini-tools plugin — 6 skills, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it to look up Houdini methods, functions, expressions, commands, or node parameters. It maps a SideFX documentation path to the matching local help archive.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/chordee/houdini-tools/houdini-docs-local
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 chordee/houdini-tools --skill houdini-docs-local
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/chordee/houdini-tools

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install houdini-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills, 1 MCP server.

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 houdini-docs-local

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chordee/houdini-tools/houdini-docs-local/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/chordee/houdini-tools/houdini-docs-local)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chordee/houdini-tools/houdini-docs-local"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chordee/houdini-tools/houdini-docs-local/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 houdini-docs-local

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chordee/houdini-tools/houdini-docs-local"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chordee/houdini-tools/houdini-docs-local.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 74 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,027 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.
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 $0.00074 $0.01027
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00513
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00205
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00103

Measured 9d ago against content hash 60085a54c4ae, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

houdini-docs-local 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 9d 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/houdini-docs-local/SKILL.md · 93 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 93 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Houdini documentation, locally

Every Houdini install carries the whole documentation set as wiki-markup source. Reaching for sidefx.com is the default habit and it is wrong twice over here: it fails behind a studio firewall, and it answers for the current release rather than the version in front of you.

The mapping

A docs URL maps to a local archive by its first path segment:

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/<first>/<rest>.html
                                     ↓
$HFS/houdini/help/<first>.zip   →   <rest>.txt
# H is the Houdini install root — the directory holding bin/ and houdini/,
# not the path to hython. Use the houdini-locator skill to find it.
# The :? makes an unset HFS fail here rather than further down: with H empty,
# the single-file read raises a traceback but the search below just returns
# nothing, which reads exactly like "the docs do not mention this".
H="${HFS:?set HFS to the Houdini install root, e.g. /opt/hfs22.0.368}"

# hom/hou/Node.html  →  hom.zip : hou/Node.txt
python -c "import zipfile;print(zipfile.ZipFile(r'$H/houdini/help/hom.zip').read('hou/Node.txt').decode('utf-8','replace'))"

Verified against help, nodes, hom, vex, expressions, commands and ref. The .txt is the source the HTML is generated from, so it carries the same content — including signatures, parameter tables and examples.

Which archive

Counts below are from Houdini 22.0.368 — 47 archives, 10450 documents. Another build will differ; run the search commands rather than trusting these numbers:

Archive Documents Contents
nodes 5033 Every node's reference page, under sop/, lop/, dop/, vop/, …
vex 1178 VEX language and functions
hom 966 Python scripting — hou/Node.txt, hou/Geometry.txt, …
expressions 478 Expression functions
commands 442 HScript commands
tops 223 PDG/TOPs
ref 202 Reference, including plugins.txt and the env-var list
solaris 73 Solaris and Karma
help 6 How the help system itself works, including its markup

Read the full file on GitHub · 93 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. 9d ago First seen · 93 lines · 74 tokens per session scan A 60085a54c4ae

Subscribe to this mod's changes

houdini-docs-local is a skill published in the GitHub repository chordee/houdini-tools (5 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 1,027 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-31.

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