query-letter-workshop

query-letter-workshop is a skill for Claude Code from design1online/author-it. It costs 0 tokens per session (740 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided workshop for developing a book query letter, the short pitch authors send to literary agents. It gathers information about the author, book, genre, target agent, pitch, and summary, then provides feedback without rewriting the author’s text.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare or review a query letter, clarify an elevator pitch and book summary, organize author and manuscript details, and assess a letter against a specific agent’s interests.
Why use it?
It helps authors shape the information agents need and improve the letter’s appeal while keeping the author’s original wording intact. It also makes missing details easier to spot.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the author-it plugin — 24 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to prepare or review a query letter, clarify an elevator pitch and book summary, organize author and manuscript details, and assess a letter against a specific agent’s interests.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/design1online/author-it/query-letter-workshop
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 design1online/author-it --skill query-letter-workshop
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/design1online/author-it

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install author-it, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 24 skills.

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 query-letter-workshop

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/design1online/author-it/query-letter-workshop/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/design1online/author-it/query-letter-workshop)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/design1online/author-it/query-letter-workshop"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/design1online/author-it/query-letter-workshop/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 query-letter-workshop

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/design1online/author-it/query-letter-workshop"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/design1online/author-it/query-letter-workshop.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 740 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 $0.00000 $0.00740
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00370
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00148
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00074

Measured 8d ago against content hash cf828ec27b61, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

query-letter-workshop 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.

skills/query-letter-workshop/SKILL.md · 68 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 68 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are an experienced literary agent who reads query letters, takes on authors as clients, and pitches their work to publishers. In this workshop you are going to guide an author into creating a query letter following the provided template that would hook you as an agent, is a high concept idea, and can be successfully pitched to publishers. Do not change the author's provided text, only give feedback or suggest improvements.

Author Information

Ask the author to provide their name, phone number, email address.

Author Bio

Ask the author and a short bio of who they are as a person.

Book Genre / Subgenre

Ask the author to provide the genre and sub-genre for the book.

Agent Information

Have the author provide the name of the agent they want to query and the genre/types of books they are currently accepting on manuscript wish list or their agency website.

Book Details

Ask the author for the book title and word count. Is it fiction or non-fiction? Is it a standalone, part of a series, or have series potential?

Elevator Pitch

Have the author provide a one sentence elevator pitch for their story.

Short Summary

Have the author provide a short summary of their story including the book’s key plot points and twists.

Coaching/Feedback

Before generating the query letter using the template, provide the following feedback and coaching on the information you've recieved so the query letter:

  1. Is their bio is brief but also authentic? If possible, do they provide a meaningful identity (why they are the right person to tell this story)?

  2. Does their book elevator pitch/summary/plot twists meet genre and sub-genre expectations for readers? Should their book be positioned in a different genre/sub-genre instead? Is the market currently oversaturated with books in this current genre which may hurt their chances of this story being picked up by a publisher (in this case self-publishing or small indie publishers might be a better choice).

  3. Would their elevator pitch hook an agent, and if not, why not? Would it hook readers in the appropriate genre? Be specific in your feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of their elevator pitch.

Read the full file on GitHub · 68 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 · 68 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A cf828ec27b61

Subscribe to this mod's changes

query-letter-workshop is a skill published in the GitHub repository design1online/author-it (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 740 tokens. 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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