prompt-patterns

A collection of prompt-writing patterns for Claude Code, an AI coding assistant. It includes ways to discover requirements, understand a codebase, test proposed changes, and improve weak solutions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing prompts, planning coding work, exploring an unfamiliar codebase, debugging interactions, or reviewing an implementation.
Why use it?
It helps turn vague requests into clearer instructions and gives structured ways to check whether coding work is correct.

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/cloudnative-co/claude-code-starter-kit/prompt-patterns
Any agent
npx skills add cloudnative-co/claude-code-starter-kit --skill prompt-patterns
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cloudnative-co/claude-code-starter-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 28 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 760 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 $0.00028 $0.00760
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00380
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00152
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00076

Measured 2d ago against content hash a8cf0b80d7f2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prompt-patterns 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 2d 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/prompt-patterns/SKILL.md · 119 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 119 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Prompt Patterns for Claude Code

Discovery Patterns

Interview-Driven Spec

Instead of writing a spec yourself, let Claude interview you:

Start with a minimal description of what I want to build, then interview me
using AskUserQuestion tool. Ask one question at a time until you have enough
information to write a complete specification. Then create the spec document.

Creates better specs than writing them manually. Claude asks questions you wouldn't think of.

Codebase Understanding

Read the entire codebase and explain the architecture to me as if I'm a new
team member. Focus on: data flow, key abstractions, and non-obvious design decisions.

Quality Challenge Patterns

Grill Mode

After implementation, challenge Claude to prove correctness:

Grill me on these changes and don't make a PR until I pass your test.

or

Prove to me this works. Diff between main and this branch, explain every change,
and identify any edge cases we missed.

Elegant Redo

When a fix works but feels hacky:

Knowing everything you know now, scrap this and implement the elegant solution.

Claude's second attempt is almost always better because it has full context of the problem.

Self-Critique

Review the code you just wrote as a senior engineer. Be harsh.
What would you change if this was going into a production system
serving 10 million users?

Efficiency Patterns

Subagent Offloading

When context is getting heavy:

Use subagents to investigate [topic]. Keep the main context clean.

Explicitly telling Claude to use subagents prevents context pollution.

Batch Operations

Process these 5 files in parallel using subagents. Each subagent handles one file.
Collect all results and present a unified summary.

Deep Reasoning

For complex design and architecture decisions:

  • Use Plan Mode for work that benefits from an explicit reviewed plan before changes.
  • Extended thinking is controlled by the harness (thinking toggle / effort settings), not by magic keywords in the prompt.
  • In the prompt itself, ask for depth in natural language, e.g.:
Before implementing, compare alternative designs and their trade-offs.

Read the full file on GitHub · 119 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. 2d ago First seen · 119 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A a8cf0b80d7f2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prompt-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository cloudnative-co/claude-code-starter-kit (147 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 760 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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