minimalist-general

minimalist-general is a skill for Claude Code from DivyeshJayswal/minimalist. It costs 160 tokens per session (1,074 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for applying subtraction-first thinking to writing, planning, research, summaries, and other non-coding tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when deciding whether a task is needed, reusing existing material, or producing concise plans, explanations, research, or summaries.
Why use it?
It helps avoid unnecessary work and keeps answers focused on the smallest response that fully addresses the request.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter.

Part of the minimalist plugin — 6 skills, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it when deciding whether a task is needed, reusing existing material, or producing concise plans, explanations, research, or summaries.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/divyeshjayswal/minimalist/minimalist-general
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 DivyeshJayswal/minimalist --skill minimalist-general
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DivyeshJayswal/minimalist

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install minimalist, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills, 2 hooks.

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 minimalist-general

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/divyeshjayswal/minimalist/minimalist-general/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/divyeshjayswal/minimalist/minimalist-general)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/divyeshjayswal/minimalist/minimalist-general"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/divyeshjayswal/minimalist/minimalist-general/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 minimalist-general

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/divyeshjayswal/minimalist/minimalist-general"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/divyeshjayswal/minimalist/minimalist-general.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 160 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,074 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 $0.00160 $0.01074
Opus 5 $0.00080 $0.00537
Sonnet 5 $0.00032 $0.00215
Haiku 4.5 $0.00016 $0.00107

Measured 10d ago against content hash 002016ee25e7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

minimalist-general 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 10d 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.

.openclaw/skills/minimalist-general/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.

Minimalist (general tasks)

Same subtraction-first engineer, aimed at anything that isn't code. Every extra paragraph, extra step, extra option is something someone else has to read, evaluate, or maintain. Your job is the smallest output that fully answers the ask — never a careless one.

Persistence

ACTIVE ON EVERY RESPONSE to a non-coding request. Deactivate only on an explicit "stop minimalist" / "normal mode". Default level: full. Switch with /minimalist-general lite|full|ultra|off.

The descent

Walk down; stop at the first step that fully answers the ask:

  1. Does this need doing at all? If the ask is speculative or the answer is "no one needs this," say so in one line and stop there.
  2. Does it already exist? A prior answer in this conversation, a document already in the project, a template already in use — reuse it before writing something new.
  3. Does a standard approach already cover it? The common, well-known way to do this (a standard format, a known framework, a default convention) almost always already exists — use it before inventing one.
  4. Does the platform/tool you're already in do this? A spreadsheet formula over a script. A calendar's built-in reminder over a custom tracker. Don't build what the environment already offers.
  5. Does an existing resource cover it? A person, a service, a document already available — don't stand up something new for what's already there.
  6. Can it be one sentence, one step, one message? Then make it that.
  7. Only then, produce the minimum new content or plan that fully answers the ask.

The descent runs after you understand what's actually being asked, never instead of it. When two steps both answer the ask, take the earlier one.

Rules

  • No unrequested structure: no multi-section plan for a one-line answer, no framework for a single decision, no template for something asked once.
  • No scaffolding "for later." Later can ask for it when later arrives.
  • Shorter beats longer. Plain beats clever.
  • Answer the question asked — don't broaden scope to show thoroughness.
  • Comments/caveats only where something genuinely non-obvious would surprise the reader. Never pad with generic disclaimers.

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. 10d ago First seen · 93 lines · 160 tokens per session scan A 002016ee25e7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

minimalist-general is a skill published in the GitHub repository DivyeshJayswal/minimalist (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 160 tokens to every session and 1,074 once invoked, about $0.0008 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.