writing-for-humans

writing-for-humans is a skill for Claude Code from dork-labs/dorkos. It costs 69 tokens per session (1,498 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing guide for text that people read in DorkOS, such as release notes, documentation, blog posts, interface text, and error messages. It sets plain-language rules for short, clear sentences.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write or review user-facing copy, including README files, guides, changelogs, blog posts, labels, and error messages.
Why use it?
It removes the guesswork from writing technical text for non-developers. It helps readers understand the message without rereading it.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents); mentions AGENTS.md.

Part of the flow plugin — 32 skills, 44 commands, 5 agents, 4 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it to write or review user-facing copy, including README files, guides, changelogs, blog posts, labels, and error messages.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dork-labs/dorkos/writing-for-humans
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 dork-labs/dorkos --skill writing-for-humans
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dork-labs/dorkos

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install flow, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills, 44 commands, 5 agents, 4 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 writing-for-humans

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dork-labs/dorkos/writing-for-humans/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/dork-labs/dorkos/writing-for-humans)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dork-labs/dorkos/writing-for-humans"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dork-labs/dorkos/writing-for-humans/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 writing-for-humans

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dork-labs/dorkos/writing-for-humans"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dork-labs/dorkos/writing-for-humans.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,498 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 $0.00069 $0.01498
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00749
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00300
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00150

Measured 4d ago against content hash 5f96f2cd6c7e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-for-humans 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 4d 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.

.agents/skills/writing-for-humans/SKILL.md · 100 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 100 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing for Humans

Every word a user reads should be plain enough for a smart 9th grader who does not write code. This skill is the readability standard for user-facing DorkOS writing. It is the shared source the other writing skills build on.

The readability contract

Hold every user-facing sentence to these five rules:

  1. Aim for a 9th-grade reading level. If a sentence needs a second read, rewrite it.
  2. Keep sentences short. Aim under 20 words. Never pack two big ideas into one sentence. Split them.
  3. Use active voice with a clear actor. Say who does what: "DorkOS opens your browser," not "the browser is opened."
  4. Lead with the benefit, then the mechanism (if at all). Say what the user gets first. Most of the time you can drop the mechanism.
  5. Define or drop every technical term. Either avoid the jargon or gloss it in the same sentence. Prefer numbers and concrete scenarios over abstractions.

House punctuation rule: no em dashes. They invite run-on sentences that smuggle in a second idea; use a comma, colon, parentheses, or a new sentence instead.

What this governs (and what it does not)

Governs every surface a user reads: changelog fragments, release notes, READMEs, npm package copy, the GitHub repo description, docs/ guide and concept pages, blog posts, UI microcopy, and error messages.

Does not govern surfaces written for developers or coding agents, which stay precise and technical:

  • ADRs → writing-adrs
  • contributing/ developer guides and API reference pages → writing-developer-guides
  • Code comments → keep them technical (.claude/rules/conventions.md)

When a page mixes both (a user guide with a developer-reference tail), split it with a clear heading like ## Reference and a framing sentence so the reader knows the audience just shifted.

Brand voice note: meta/brand-foundation.md §10 has two registers. This skill is the plain-language register. Brand vocabulary (Autonomous, Orchestration, Operator) is allowed here only with an in-sentence gloss.

Read the full file on GitHub · 100 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. 4d ago Changed · +69 tokens per session 5f96f2cd6c7e
  2. 12d ago First seen · 100 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 66453ed5a5c1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-for-humans is a skill published in the GitHub repository dork-labs/dorkos (9 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 1,498 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.