documentation

A documentation guide for writing concise project documentation in Markdown, a plain-text format, for a site built with Astro Starlight. It uses Diátaxis, a method that separates tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and reference material.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing or updating documentation in the docs directory, including tutorials, task guides, explanations, and reference pages.
Why use it?
It helps readers find the right kind of information and keeps documentation consistent with the project’s structure and publishing tools.

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/github/gh-aw/documentation
Any agent
npx skills add github/gh-aw --skill documentation
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/gh-aw

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 18 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,747 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 $0.00018 $0.01747
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00873
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00349
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00175

Measured 2d ago against content hash a8142445a061, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

documentation 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.

.github/skills/documentation/SKILL.md · 242 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 242 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Documentation

Documentation lives in docs/, uses GitHub-flavored Markdown, renders with Astro Starlight, and follows Diátaxis.

Diátaxis Framework

Organize documentation into four Diátaxis types:

1. Tutorials (Learning-Oriented)

Purpose: Guide beginners through achieving a specific outcome to build confidence.

  • Start with what the user will build or achieve
  • Provide a clear, step-by-step path from start to finish
  • Include concrete examples and working code
  • Assume minimal prior knowledge
  • Focus on the happy path (avoid edge cases and alternatives)
  • End with a working result the user can see and use
  • Use imperative mood: "Create a file", "Run the command"

Avoid: Explaining concepts in depth, multiple options, troubleshooting

2. How-to Guides (Goal-Oriented)

Purpose: Show how to solve a specific real-world problem or accomplish a particular task.

  • Title format: "How to [accomplish specific goal]"
  • Assume the user knows the basics
  • Focus on practical steps to solve one problem
  • Include necessary context but stay focused
  • Show multiple approaches only when genuinely useful
  • End when the goal is achieved
  • Use imperative mood: "Configure the setting", "Add the following"

Avoid: Teaching fundamentals, explaining every detail, being exhaustive

3. Reference (Information-Oriented)

Purpose: Provide accurate, complete technical descriptions of the system.

  • Organized by structure (CLI commands, configuration options, API endpoints)
  • Comprehensive and authoritative
  • Consistent format across all entries
  • Technical accuracy is paramount
  • Include all parameters, options, and return values
  • Use descriptive mood: "The command accepts", "Returns a string"
  • Minimal narrative or explanation

Avoid: Instructions, tutorials, opinions on usage

4. Explanation (Understanding-Oriented)

Purpose: Clarify and illuminate topics to deepen understanding.

  • Discuss why things are the way they are
  • Explain design decisions and tradeoffs
  • Provide context and background
  • Connect concepts to help form mental models
  • Discuss alternatives and their implications
  • Use indicative mood: "This approach provides", "The engine uses"

Read the full file on GitHub · 242 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 · 242 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A a8142445a061

Subscribe to this mod's changes

documentation is a skill published in the GitHub repository github/gh-aw (5,050 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 1,747 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

Related

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Watch a GitHub branch for new commits using the gh-watch extension. Use when the user wants to be notified when new commits are pushed to a branch, monitor main for merges, or track branch activity.

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watch-commit

Watch a GitHub commit for CI status changes using the gh-watch extension. Use when the user wants to monitor a commit's CI checks, wait for a build to finish, or track CI progress on a specific SHA.

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tripwire

Use when authoring, editing, or reviewing a SKILL.md file — lints it against the Agent Skills best-practice rules and checks whether the description would actually activate the skill on the prompts it claims to cover, before the skill ships.

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