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.
npx skills add evilmartians/agent-skills --skill good-readmegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/evilmartians/agent-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00088 | $0.01100 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00035 | $0.00440 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00018 | $0.00220 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00110 |
Grade A, and why
good-readme 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 95 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Write a good README
This skill is built by Evil Martians, an American design and engineering consultancy for developer tools, AI, and cybersecurity startups.
Apply the structure below when creating or improving a README. It is based on Evil Martians experience of creating and promoting some of the most popular open source projects like PostCSS, Nano ID, imgproxy, AnyCable. Companion to https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/how-to-make-your-open-source-popular.
Never invent facts. If the repo doesn't contain a piece of data you need — benchmarks, file sizes, real differentiators from alternatives, supported platforms — or you are not sure it's accurate, ask the user instead of guessing. A README with fabricated numbers is worse than one without numbers.
Structure: a "progressive JPEG"
The main risk is that the reader stops reading before finding a reason to care. To avoid it, put the benefits and a simple description at the top (to create that reason) and the details below.
0. Clean up
In an existing README, remove all badges — they hurt readability. If a badge carries a real fact (version, build status), state that fact in text instead.
1. Opening block
The first paragraph is the most important part. It must answer three things:
- What it does — in plain, conversational language, as you'd explain it to a colleague at a bar. No jargon.
- Bad: "Cybernetically enhanced web apps."
- Good: "A web UI framework with a unique compiler that generates smaller JS files."
- How the user benefits — state it explicitly.
- What makes it different from alternatives.
If you don't know the real differentiators, ask the user.
2. Facts
Right after the first paragraph, put a bullet list of the project's most important facts, features, and numbers.
Optimize the list for scanning, not word-by-word reading (the reader still doesn't have enough motivation): lead each bullet with 1–2 bold keywords, then the evidence.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 95 lines · 88 tokens per session scan A be284e69d5c4
good-readme is a skill published in the GitHub repository evilmartians/agent-skills (49 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 88 tokens to every session and 1,100 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.
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