file-edit-in-place

file-edit-in-place is a skill for Codex from conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing. It costs 43 tokens per session (951 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A targeted file editor for rewriting a named local file while keeping its meaning, structure, voice, and protected content. It also checks the file after editing.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to remove AI-like writing patterns, improve wording, or humanize one specified file with limited edits.
Why use it?
It prevents a cleanup request from changing more of the file than intended. It only writes when the user has explicitly asked for a file change.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present.

Good fit Use it to remove AI-like writing patterns, improve wording, or humanize one specified file with limited edits.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing/file-edit-in-place
About the project

avoid-ai-writing is a portable writing skill that detects common patterns associated with AI-generated prose and can rewrite them or make targeted edits to prose files. It is for users of Claude Code, OpenClaw, Hermes, and other compatible coding agents who want text to sound more like human writing. The catalogue entries are the skill's rule and instruction components.

conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing · 4,286 stars · on GitHub · chainofthought.show

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 conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing --skill file-edit-in-place
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing

Made for: 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 file-edit-in-place

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing/file-edit-in-place/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing/file-edit-in-place)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing/file-edit-in-place"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing/file-edit-in-place/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 file-edit-in-place

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing/file-edit-in-place"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing/file-edit-in-place.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 951 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to low

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • low Excessive Agency · line 98
    Skill's behavior or capabilities extend beyond its stated purpose. Scope creep allows an agent to perform actions unrelated to its documented functionality, increasing the attack surface.
    Fix: Limit the skill's scope to its documented purpose. Remove instructions that enable the agent to perform actions outside its stated functionality.
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 $0.00043 $0.00951
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00476
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00190
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00095

Measured 6d ago against content hash 292b6a429e71, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

file-edit-in-place 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 6d 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/file-edit-in-place/SKILL.md · 103 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 103 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

File Edit In Place

Edit a named file according to the original ../avoid-ai-writing/SKILL.md edit mode.

For cross-Skill work, follow ../avoid-ai-writing-router/references/handoff-contract.md and ../avoid-ai-writing-router/references/skill-graph.json.

Connection contract

Incoming

Accept mutation work from:

  • avoid-ai-writing-router via ROUTE when a named file and explicit mutation request are present.
  • ai-writing-detector via FEED only when the user requested a named-file fix after an audit.
  • preservation-verifier via bounded REPAIR when the named file failed a preservation check.

A detector result never authorizes a write by itself. User mutation intent must already be explicit.

Required handoff state

Before mutation, preserve:

  • source file reference,
  • relevant original content or before snapshot,
  • requested scope,
  • context mode and voice constraints,
  • protected semantic constraints,
  • detector evidence when already available,
  • representation-sensitive guard state when applicable.

Set execution_evidence.mutation: executed only after a real host write/patch succeeds.

Outgoing

  • VERIFY to preservation-verifier after a successful edit when before/after material is available.
  • Return to the router if the user changes from named-file mutation to returned-text rewriting.
  • Return to the router for consequential authorship interpretation rather than answering it locally.

Senior-developer implementation lens

Apply the agency-senior-developer lens encoded in ../avoid-ai-writing-router/references/agency-role-lenses.md:

  • read before writing,
  • use the narrowest available edit or patch mechanism,
  • retain a before snapshot for verification,
  • propagate write failures instead of reporting success,
  • re-read the changed region,
  • keep mutation and verification evidence distinct.

Do not claim a file was edited because a patch was merely proposed.

Conditional representation guard

If the named file contains an image/video prompt, storyboard, shot description, or creative brief that describes people, preserve identity-sensitive details using the agency-inclusive-visuals-specialist lens.

Read the full file on GitHub · 103 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 6d ago First seen · 103 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 292b6a429e71

Subscribe to this mod's changes

file-edit-in-place is a skill published in the GitHub repository conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing (4,286 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 951 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-05.

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