good-readme

good-readme is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from evilmartians/agent-skills. It costs 88 tokens per session (1,100 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for writing or improving a README, the main information page for a software project. It focuses on explaining what an open-source library, framework, or tool does and how people can start using it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create, rewrite, review, or polish README files, project descriptions, and getting-started documentation.
Why use it?
It helps readers understand a project quickly instead of searching through the repository for basic facts. It also avoids making unsupported claims when the project does not provide enough information.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to create, rewrite, review, or polish README files, project descriptions, and getting-started documentation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme
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 evilmartians/agent-skills --skill good-readme
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/evilmartians/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin good-readme/plugin install good-readme 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 good-readme

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/evilmartians/agent-skills/good-readme)
Your own site
<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.

agentmods 80×15 button for good-readme

Your own site · 80×15
<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>
Per session 88 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,100 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
  • 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 $0.00088 $0.01100
Opus 5 $0.00044 $0.00550
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00220
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00110

Measured 10d ago against content hash be284e69d5c4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

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 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.

skills/good-readme/SKILL.md · 95 lines

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.

Read the full file on GitHub · 95 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 · 95 lines · 88 tokens per session scan A be284e69d5c4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

good-readme is a skill published in the GitHub repository evilmartians/agent-skills (40 stars, last pushed 28d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 88 tokens to every session and 1,100 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.

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