shader-programming

shader-programming is a skill for Claude Code from gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills. It costs 95 tokens per session (1,788 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide to shaders, which are small GPU programs that control how game vertices and pixels are positioned and colored. It explains reusable ideas such as UV coordinates and coordinate spaces in GLSL, with HLSL equivalents.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create tinting, scrolling textures, dissolves, outlines, rim lighting, vignettes, and color changes. It also helps with vertex and fragment shaders and GLSL-to-HLSL translation.
Why use it?
It helps developers understand shader code and translate visual effects between game engines without relying on engine-specific syntax.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the disciplines plugin — 15 skills shipped together , and of gamedev

Good fit Use it to create tinting, scrolling textures, dissolves, outlines, rim lighting, vignettes, and color changes. It also helps with vertex and fragment shaders and GLSL-to-HLSL translation.

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

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install disciplines, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 15 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 shader-programming

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/shader-programming/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/shader-programming)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/shader-programming"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/shader-programming/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 shader-programming

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/shader-programming"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/shader-programming.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 95 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,788 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
  • Socket pass 8 Aug 2026
  • Snyk pass 8 Aug 2026
  • 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 $0.00095 $0.01788
Opus 5 $0.00048 $0.00894
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00358
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00179

Measured 12d ago against content hash e89558b15691, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

shader-programming 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

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/disciplines/shader-programming/SKILL.md · 152 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 152 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Shader programming (cross-engine)

Shaders are small programs that run per vertex and per pixel on the GPU. The concepts — the pipeline, coordinate spaces, UVs, and how common effects are built — port across engines; only the language dialect and built-in variable names change. This skill teaches those portable fundamentals in GLSL with HLSL equivalents; use godot-shaders (or Unity/Unreal material docs) for the exact engine syntax and built-ins.

When to use

  • Use to understand or write vertex/fragment shaders and to reason about UVs, coordinate spaces, and the GPU pipeline.
  • Use to build common effects: tint/recolor, scrolling textures, dissolve, outlines, fresnel/rim light, vignette, color grading.
  • Use to translate a shader concept between GLSL and HLSL, or between engines.

When not to use: for an engine's exact shader language and built-ins, use godot-shaders (Godot shading language) or the engine's material docs. For full particle VFX systems, see unreal-niagara. For post-process stacks, defer to the engine's renderer settings.

Core workflow

  1. Know which stage you're in. The vertex shader transforms each vertex into clip space and passes data (UVs, normals) onward; the fragment/pixel shader runs per rasterized pixel and outputs a color. Most game effects live in the fragment stage.
  2. Track coordinate spaces. Positions move model → world → view → clip space; normals belong in world or view space. Mixing spaces is the most common bug.
  3. Drive effects with UVs and time. UVs are 0..1 texture coordinates; offset, scale, or distort them, and animate with a time uniform.
  4. Work per pixel, branch-light. Prefer mix, step, smoothstep, and clamp over if where possible; GPUs run pixels in lockstep and dislike divergent branches.
  5. Pass data via uniforms (constant per draw) and varyings (interpolated vertex→fragment). Keep texture samples few; they dominate cost.
  6. Verify visually and on target hardware. Shaders that look right on desktop can break on mobile (precision, missing features). Test where it ships.

Read the full file on GitHub · 152 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 12d ago First seen · 152 lines · 95 tokens per session scan A e89558b15691

Subscribe to this mod's changes

shader-programming is a skill published in the GitHub repository gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills (952 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 95 tokens to every session and 1,788 once invoked, about $0.0005 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.