ask-matt

ask-matt is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from FradSer/dotclaude. It costs 50 tokens per session (3,292 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide that recommends which available skill or workflow fits a user's situation. It acts as a directory and explains routes for turning an idea into a shipped project, including planning, prototyping, and documentation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find an appropriate skill for tasks such as refining an idea, working with an existing codebase, building a prototype, or moving between planning and implementation.
Why use it?
When several workflows are available, choosing the right starting point can be unclear. This guide helps match the task to a suitable path without requiring the user to remember every option.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the mattpocock plugin — 6 skills shipped together

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/fradser/dotclaude/ask-matt
Any agent
npx skills add FradSer/dotclaude --skill ask-matt
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/FradSer/dotclaude

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install mattpocock, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills.

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 ask-matt

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/fradser/dotclaude/ask-matt.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/fradser/dotclaude/ask-matt)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/fradser/dotclaude/ask-matt"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/fradser/dotclaude/ask-matt.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 50 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,292 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 $0.00050 $0.03292
Opus 5 $0.00025 $0.01646
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00658
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00329

Measured 4d ago against content hash 358ed34dbe26, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-matt 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 4d 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.

mattpocock/skills/engineering/ask-matt/SKILL.md · 98 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 98 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask Matt

You don't remember every skill, so ask.

A flow is a path through the skills. Most paths run along one main flow, and two on-ramps merge onto it. Everything else is standalone, or a vocabulary layer that runs underneath.

The main flow: idea → ship

The route most work travels. You have an idea and want it built.

  1. /mattpocock:grill-with-docs — sharpen the idea by interview. Start here when you have a codebase: it's stateful, retaining what it learns in CONTEXT.md and ADRs. (No codebase? Use /mattpocock:grill-me — see Standalone. Both run the same /mattpocock:grilling primitive; grill-with-docs is the one that leaves a paper trail.)

  2. Branch — can you settle every question in conversation? If a question needs a runnable answer (state, business logic, a UI you have to see), detour through a prototype, bridged by /mattpocock:handoff in both directions (see Crossing sessions):

    • /mattpocock:handoff out, then open a fresh session against that file,
    • /mattpocock:prototype to answer the question with throwaway code,
    • /mattpocock:handoff back what you learned, and reference it from the original idea thread.
  3. Branch — is this a multi-session build?

    • Yes/mattpocock:to-spec (turn the thread into a spec), then /mattpocock:to-tickets to split it into tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges. On a local tracker that's one file per ticket under .scratch/<feature>/issues/, worked blockers-first by hand; on a real tracker the edges become native blocking links, so any ticket whose blockers are done can be grabbed — kick off /mattpocock:implement per ticket, clearing context between each one.
    • No/mattpocock:implement right here, in the same context window.

    Either way, /mattpocock:implement builds each issue by driving /mattpocock:bdd internally (Discovery → Formulation, then Automation delegated to /mattpocock:tdd) — one vertical slice at a time — then closes out by running /mattpocock:code-review, a two-axis review (Standards + Spec) of the diff, before committing. Reach for /mattpocock:bdd on its own when you want to define Gherkin scenarios for a feature, and /mattpocock:tdd on its own when you want to write tests within the BDD Automation phase. Reach for /mattpocock:code-review on its own whenever you want to review a branch or PR against a fixed point.

Read the full file on GitHub · 98 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 4d ago First seen · 98 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A 358ed34dbe26

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-matt is a skill published in the GitHub repository FradSer/dotclaude (588 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 3,292 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 2026-08-30.

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