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 gear-foundation/vara-skills --skill vara-skills-upgradegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gear-foundation/vara-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/gear-foundation/vara-skills/vara-skills-upgrade)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gear-foundation/vara-skills/vara-skills-upgrade"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gear-foundation/vara-skills/vara-skills-upgrade/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/gear-foundation/vara-skills/vara-skills-upgrade"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gear-foundation/vara-skills/vara-skills-upgrade.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00038 | $0.01209 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00019 | $0.00605 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00008 | $0.00242 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00121 |
Grade A, and why
vara-skills-upgrade scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 13d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 134 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Vara Skills Upgrade
Role
Upgrade the vara-skills pack to the latest version. Invoked automatically by the preamble when UPGRADE_AVAILABLE is detected, or manually via /vara-skills-upgrade.
Standalone Usage
Run the update check with force (busts cache and snooze):
_VS_DIR=""
for _d in \
"${VARA_SKILLS_DIR:-}" \
"$HOME/.claude/skills/vara-skills" \
".claude/skills/vara-skills" \
"$HOME"/.claude/plugins/cache/vara-skills/vara-skills/*; do
if [ -n "$_d" ] && [ -f "$_d/bin/vara-skills-update-check" ]; then
_VS_DIR="$_d"; break
fi
done
VARA_SKILLS_DIR="${_VS_DIR:-${VARA_SKILLS_DIR:-}}"
export VARA_SKILLS_DIR
_UPD=$("$VARA_SKILLS_DIR/bin/vara-skills-update-check" --force 2>/dev/null || true)
[ -n "$_UPD" ] && echo "$_UPD" || echo "vara-skills is up to date ($(cat "$VARA_SKILLS_DIR/VERSION" 2>/dev/null || echo unknown))"
Then follow the routing below based on output.
Inline Upgrade Flow
This section is called by the preamble when the update check outputs UPGRADE_AVAILABLE <old> <new>.
Step 1: Check auto-upgrade
_AUTO="${VARA_SKILLS_AUTO_UPGRADE:-}"
If _AUTO is true or 1, skip to Step 3 (upgrade silently).
Step 2: Ask the user
Use AskUserQuestion:
vara-skills v{new} is available (you have v{old}).
A) Upgrade now B) Not now (snooze) C) Never ask again
If A (Upgrade now): proceed to Step 3.
If B (Not now): Write snooze state and continue with the original skill.
# Read current snooze level (default to 0 if no file)
_SNOOZE_LEVEL=0
_SNOOZE_FILE="${VARA_SKILLS_STATE_DIR:-$HOME/.vara-skills}/update-snoozed"
if [ -f "$_SNOOZE_FILE" ]; then
_SNOOZE_LEVEL=$(awk '{print $2}' "$_SNOOZE_FILE" 2>/dev/null || echo 0)
fi
_SNOOZE_LEVEL=$(( _SNOOZE_LEVEL + 1 ))
mkdir -p "${VARA_SKILLS_STATE_DIR:-$HOME/.vara-skills}"
echo "{new} $_SNOOZE_LEVEL $(date +%s)" > "$_SNOOZE_FILE"
Tell the user the snooze duration (level 1: 24h, level 2: 48h, level 3+: 7 days) and continue.
What ships with it
3 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.
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.
- 13d ago First seen · 134 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A 6eaf405b5d3d
vara-skills-upgrade is a skill published in the GitHub repository gear-foundation/vara-skills (17 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 1,209 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
systematic-debugging
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.
local-ai-agents
Build local-first AI agents that run entirely on a developer workstation with Microsoft Foundry Local and Qwen function-calling models. Covers Small Language Models (SLMs), the OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, sandboxed local tools, local RAG with Chroma, local MCP servers, hybrid cloud/local routing, and the…
next-cache-components-adoption
Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…
chat-pet-sprite-creation
Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.
cpu-profile-analysis
Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…
insight-error-page
Write or audit an insight-kind error page for the Next.js dev overlay. Use when creating a new errors/ .mdx page, auditing an existing one, or checking that a page matches the framework fix cards. Covers page structure, title alignment, FixCard cards with Copy prompt button, code snippets, terminology verification…