technical-writing

technical-writing is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills. It costs 23 tokens per session (4,295 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to writing technical information that people can follow, including procedures, manuals, guides, release notes, and other documentation. It emphasizes clear language, task-focused structure, and checking instructions before publishing.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write setup instructions, standard operating procedures, user manuals, developer guides, and release notes.
Why use it?
It helps readers find answers and complete tasks without interpreting dense or ambiguous prose. It also reduces errors caused by outdated or untested commands and procedures.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to write setup instructions, standard operating procedures, user manuals, developer guides, and release notes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/technical-writing
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 cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills --skill technical-writing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills

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 technical-writing

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/technical-writing/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/technical-writing)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/technical-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/technical-writing/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 technical-writing

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/technical-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/technical-writing.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 23 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,295 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 warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 9 findings, up to medium

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 →

  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 291
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 499
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 294
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 297
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 504
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 300
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 508
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 452
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 460
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
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 $0.00023 $0.04295
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.02148
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00859
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00430

Measured 8d ago against content hash 8e57affd6ebd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

technical-writing 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 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.

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.

categories/development/technical-writing/SKILL.md · 557 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 557 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Technical Writing Mastery

Write clear, effective technical documentation that your audience can actually use — SOPs that get followed, manuals that solve problems, and release notes that keep everyone informed.

Core Principles

1. Know Your Audience

Every document serves a specific reader with a specific goal. A system administrator reading an SOP needs exact CLI commands. An end-user reading a manual needs step-by-step workflows. A developer reading release notes needs to know what changed and whether it breaks their code.

2. Active Voice, Plain Language

Write directly. "The system processes the request" — not "The request is processed by the system." Use plain language: "Start the server" instead of "Initiate the server startup sequence."

3. Structure for Scanning

Most people don't read documentation — they scan it. Use clear headings, bullet lists, tables, and bold key terms so readers find what they need in seconds.

4. One Task Per Section

Each section should answer one question or guide one action. If a section covers more than one task, split it.

5. Test Everything You Write

If you write a command, run it. If you write a procedure, follow it exactly as written. Nothing erodes trust faster than instructions that don't work.


Technical Writing Maturity Model

Level Audience Awareness Style Consistency Structure Review Process Maintenance
1: Ad Hoc None — one-size-fits-all Inconsistent tone and voice No headings, walls of text No review Never updated
2: Basic Some awareness of primary audience Mostly consistent Basic headings, some lists Peer review occasionally Updated for major releases
3: Structured Audience-defined docs for different readers Style guide followed Clear hierarchy, tables, scanned layout Dedicated review cycle Updated with each release
4: Systematic Persona-based documentation Automated style linting Information architecture mapped SME + editor review Versioned, changelog maintained
5: Exemplary Proactive content based on user analytics Programmatic consistency enforced Modular, reusable content components Automated + multi-stage review Continuous updates, feedback-driven

Read the full file on GitHub · 557 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 · 557 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A 8e57affd6ebd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

technical-writing is a skill published in the GitHub repository cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills (470 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 4,295 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 2026-09-03.

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