crafting-effective-readmes

crafting-effective-readmes is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace. It costs 35 tokens per session (630 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of crafting-effective-readmes, MIT.

A guide for writing or improving README files, the project documents that explain what software is, how to use it, and how to contribute. It recommends adapting the document to its intended readers and task.

In plain words
What is it for?
Creating, adding to, updating, or reviewing README content for projects, contributors, users, or maintainers.
Why use it?
It prevents README files from becoming generic, incomplete, or out of date for the people who rely on them.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Creating, adding to, updating, or reviewing README content for projects, contributors, users, or maintainers.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace/crafting-effective-readmes
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 eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace --skill crafting-effective-readmes
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin crafting-effective-readmes/plugin install crafting-effective-readmes after adding the marketplace above.

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 crafting-effective-readmes

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace/crafting-effective-readmes/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace/crafting-effective-readmes)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace/crafting-effective-readmes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace/crafting-effective-readmes/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 crafting-effective-readmes

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace/crafting-effective-readmes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace/crafting-effective-readmes.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 630 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 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00035 $0.00630
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00315
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00126
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00063

Measured 12d ago against content hash 638b271fdc14, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

crafting-effective-readmes 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 12d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to crafting-effective-readmes — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

crafting-effective-readmes/SKILL.md · 79 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 79 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Crafting Effective READMEs

Overview

READMEs answer questions your audience will have. Different audiences need different information - a contributor to an OSS project needs different context than future-you opening a config folder.

Always ask: Who will read this, and what do they need to know?

Process

Step 1: Identify the Task

Ask: "What README task are you working on?"

Task When
Creating New project, no README yet
Adding Need to document something new
Updating Capabilities changed, content is stale
Reviewing Checking if README is still accurate

Step 2: Task-Specific Questions

Creating initial README:

  1. What type of project? (see Project Types below)
  2. What problem does this solve in one sentence?
  3. What's the quickest path to "it works"?
  4. Anything notable to highlight?

Adding a section:

  1. What needs documenting?
  2. Where should it go in the existing structure?
  3. Who needs this info most?

Updating existing content:

  1. What changed?
  2. Read current README, identify stale sections
  3. Propose specific edits

Reviewing/refreshing:

  1. Read current README
  2. Check against actual project state (package.json, main files, etc.)
  3. Flag outdated sections
  4. Update "Last reviewed" date if present

Step 3: Always Ask

After drafting, ask: "Anything else to highlight or include that I might have missed?"

Project Types

Type Audience Key Sections Template
Open Source Contributors, users worldwide Install, Usage, Contributing, License templates/oss.md
Personal Future you, portfolio viewers What it does, Tech stack, Learnings templates/personal.md
Internal Teammates, new hires Setup, Architecture, Runbooks templates/internal.md
Config Future you (confused) What's here, Why, How to extend, Gotchas templates/xdg-config.md

Ask the user if unclear. Don't assume OSS defaults for everything.

Read the full file on GitHub · 79 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. 12d ago First seen · 79 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A 638b271fdc14

Subscribe to this mod's changes

crafting-effective-readmes is a skill published in the GitHub repository eugenepyvovarov/mcpbundler-agent-skills-marketplace (12 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 630 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to crafting-effective-readmes, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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