ralph

A converter that turns an existing PRD—a document describing a feature's requirements—into prd.json, the JSON format used by Ralph to carry out work in small user stories. It creates stories with descriptions, acceptance criteria, priorities, and status fields.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a PRD needs to become Ralph execution data, with small stories such as one database change, backend behavior, interface element, or filter per work item.
Why use it?
It removes the manual effort of breaking a feature document into small, trackable pieces that an automated coding workflow can process one at a time.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/fagnerjs/ralphi/ralph
Any agent
npx skills add fagnerjs/ralphi --skill ralph
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/fagnerjs/ralphi

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 65 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,760 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00065 $0.01760
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00880
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00352
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00176

Measured 2d ago against content hash 303d23d54286, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ralph 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 2d 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/ralph/SKILL.md · 272 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 272 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ralph JSON Converter

Turn an existing PRD into the prd.json document Ralph uses to drive autonomous execution.


Goal

Take a PRD in Markdown or plain text and produce prd.json inside the Ralph workspace.


Required Output Shape

Use this structure:

{
  "project": "[Project Name]",
  "branchName": "ralph/[feature-name-kebab-case]",
  "description": "[Short feature summary based on the PRD]",
  "userStories": [
    {
      "id": "US-001",
      "title": "[Story title]",
      "description": "As a [user], I want [capability] so that [benefit]",
      "acceptanceCriteria": [
        "Criterion 1",
        "Criterion 2",
        "Typecheck passes"
      ],
      "priority": 1,
      "passes": false,
      "notes": ""
    }
  ]
}

Most Important Rule: Keep Stories Small

Every story must fit within a single Ralph iteration.

Ralph starts each iteration with a fresh Amp session. If a story spans too much code or too many concerns, the model is likely to lose context and leave the work incomplete.

Good story sizes

  • Add one database field plus its migration
  • Add one focused backend behavior
  • Add one UI element to an existing screen
  • Add one filter or control to an existing list

Stories that are too large

Break down items like these:

  • "Build the whole dashboard"
  • "Add authentication"
  • "Refactor the API"

Instead, split them into smaller steps such as schema work, backend logic, UI pieces, and follow-up interactions.

Practical rule: if the change cannot be explained clearly in 2-3 sentences, split it further.


Order Stories by Dependency

Ralph executes stories according to priority. Earlier work must unlock later work, not depend on it.

Preferred order

  1. Database or schema changes
  2. Backend or server-side behavior
  3. UI work that depends on the backend
  4. Summary, reporting, or aggregation views

Avoid this pattern

  1. UI story that assumes missing backend or schema support
  2. Supporting backend/schema story that should have come first

Read the full file on GitHub · 272 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. 2d ago First seen · 272 lines · 65 tokens per session scan A 303d23d54286

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ralph is a skill published in the GitHub repository fagnerjs/ralphi (6 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 65 tokens to every session and 1,760 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.

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