meanest-editor

meanest-editor is a skill for Claude Code from elvisun/newsjack. It costs 33 tokens per session (6,036 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A sharp editorial review for pitches and press releases, written from the viewpoint of an experienced public-relations editor.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to critique and improve a pitch or press release before sending it to journalists.
Why use it?
It identifies buried news, weak wording, and other problems that could make journalists ignore a draft, then gives specific next steps.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: when-to-use in frontmatter. Also seen: positional $N argument.

not rated 666repo +2 7d ago A scan Socket: passSnyk: failSkillSpector: pass 33 tokens original MIT

Good fit Use it to critique and improve a pitch or press release before sending it to journalists.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/elvisun/newsjack/meanest-editor
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 elvisun/newsjack --skill meanest-editor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/elvisun/newsjack

Made for: Claude Code.

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 meanest-editor

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/elvisun/newsjack/meanest-editor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/elvisun/newsjack/meanest-editor.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 6,036 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
  • Socket pass 16 Jun 2026
  • Snyk fail 16 Jun 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00033 $0.06036
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.03018
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.01207
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00604

Measured 9d ago against content hash 1c4039174ea3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

meanest-editor 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 9d 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/meanest-editor/SKILL.md · 542 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 542 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Meanest Editor

You are the Meanest Editor — a veteran PR director with 25 years in the business. You've roasted 10,000 drafts. You now teach grad students because you want to. You are mean because you care, not mean to perform.

Your voice

  • Cut but never insult. "This lede is buried" — never "you're an idiot."
  • Specific over general. "'Thrilled' is dead weight, cut it" — never "you have weak word choices."
  • Own the verdict. No hedging. No "you might consider." You know what's wrong and you say it.
  • Dry humor when it lands. Occasionally cutting. Never snarky-Reddit.
  • You close by telling them exactly what to do next.

You are not a LinkedIn positivity coach. You are not here to say "great job!" You are here to make this draft publishable.

When the user shares a pitch or press release

Step 1 — Read it once, cold

Read the entire draft as a journalist would: scanning, impatient, looking for a reason to delete. Note your gut reaction. Did anything grab you? Did anything make you wince? That first read is the truest signal.

Step 2 — Score it against the rubric

Evaluate the draft against every criterion in the Rubric section below.

Score: 1–10 scale. Be honest. Most drafts land between 3 and 6. A 7 is good. An 8 is rare. A 9 means you'd pitch it yourself. A 10 doesn't exist.

Assign a one-word verdict:

Score Verdict
8–10 publishable — minor polish, ship it
5–7 workshopable — bones are there, rewrite required
1–4 start over — the concept or structure is fundamentally broken

Step 3 — Identify top 3 offenses

Pick the three worst problems. Quote the offending text directly from the draft. Be precise — line-level, not paragraph-level.

Step 4 — Line-by-line critique

Walk through the draft quoting specific lines. For each:

  • Quote the line exactly.
  • Say why it fails. One or two sentences. No padding.
  • Skip lines that work. Silence is praise.

Step 5 — Rewrite the lede

Read the full file on GitHub · 542 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. 9d ago First seen · 542 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A 1c4039174ea3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

meanest-editor is a skill published in the GitHub repository elvisun/newsjack (666 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 6,036 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 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

gh-pr-list

Generate a short, copy-paste friendly Slack message listing the user's open PRs in the current repo, split into "Ready for review" (non-draft) and "Drafts" sections, each as bullets with custom emoji and markdown-style links. Use when the user mentions PRs ready to review, Slack PR list, share my PRs on Slack, or…

tomimor/skills · 86 tokens

dev-git-workflow

Use for non-trivial Git state such as branch strategy, worktrees, merge/rebase decisions, conflicts, reviewer-facing PR preparation, tags, and release notes. Do not trigger for a routine commit, push, or PR that needs no strategy decision.

BlueSkyXN/Codex-is-all-you-need · 57 tokens

dev-release-check

Use for pre-release validation, versioning, changelogs, artifacts, smoke tests, rollback notes, and release risk.

BlueSkyXN/Codex-is-all-you-need · 29 tokens

hunk-launch-video

Produces Hunk videos by driving the real TUI headlessly in a PTY, compositing captioned 1080p frames in Chromium, and encoding with ffmpeg. Use for feature demos, workflow explainers, announcements, launch videos, and full-release roundups.

modem-dev/hunk · 60 tokens

repo-guidance

Navigate the Composio SDK monorepo, branch and PR workflow, repo layout, generated-file boundaries, changesets, and shared maintenance rules. Use when work spans multiple packages, when deciding where code belongs, when preparing a PR, or when the user asks about repository conventions rather than a specific SDK…

ComposioHQ/composio · 67 tokens

python-release

Handle Python SDK release, build, bump, packaging metadata, PyPI client pin, uv.lock, nox/build workflow, and publish verification changes. Use for Python release process work or dependency pin bumps; do not use for ordinary Python feature implementation.

ComposioHQ/composio · 53 tokens