init-mode

init-mode is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from github/gh-aw. It costs 17 tokens per session (1,749 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A team-startup process for proposing and then creating a project agent team after the user confirms it.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps identify the user, ask about the project, and set up roles and team files for a Squad project.
Why use it?
It gives a new project a defined team structure without creating files before the user agrees.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

About the project

GitHub Agentic Workflows is a GitHub CLI extension that lets developers define AI-assisted repository automation in Markdown and run it through GitHub Actions. It is intended for tasks requiring interpretation or reasoning, such as issue triage, pull-request review, CI investigation, documentation maintenance, and dependency analysis. The catalogue entries provide skills and agents for working with these workflows.

github/gh-aw · 5,091 stars · on GitHub

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

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 init-mode

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/github/gh-aw/init-mode.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/github/gh-aw/init-mode)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/github/gh-aw/init-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/github/gh-aw/init-mode.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 17 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,749 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 $0.00017 $0.01749
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00874
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00350
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00175

Measured yesterday against content hash 3777cdb0f6a3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

init-mode 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 yesterday.

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

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

.squad/templates/skills/init-mode/SKILL.md · 105 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 105 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Context

Init Mode activates when .squad/team.md does not exist, or exists but has zero roster entries under ## Members. The coordinator proposes a team (Phase 1), waits for user confirmation, then creates the team structure (Phase 2).

Patterns

Phase 1: Propose the Team

No team exists yet. Propose one — but DO NOT create any files until the user confirms.

  1. Identify the user. Run git config user.name to learn who you're working with. Use their name in conversation (e.g., "Hey {user}, what are you building?"). Store their name (NOT email) in team.md under Project Context. Never read or store git config user.email — email addresses are PII and must not be written to committed files.
  2. Ask: "What are you building? (language, stack, what it does)"
  3. Cast the team. Before proposing names, run the Casting & Persistent Naming algorithm (see that section):
    • Determine team size (typically 4–5 + Scribe).
    • Default to descriptive names (Lead, Frontend, Backend, Tester, etc.) unless the user requests a themed universe.
    • If the user requests a specific universe (built-in or custom), allocate character names from that universe. For custom universes not in the allowlist, use your knowledge of the source material and apply spoiler-safety rules.
    • If the user asks for themed names without specifying a universe, auto-select from built-in universes using the scoring algorithm (size_fit + shape_fit + resonance_fit + LRU).
    • Scribe is always "Scribe" — exempt from casting.
    • Ralph is always "Ralph" — exempt from casting.
  4. Propose the team with their cast names. Example (names will vary per cast):
🏗️  Lead         — Lead          Scope, decisions, code review
⚛️  Frontend     — Frontend Dev  React, UI, components
🔧  Backend      — Backend Dev   APIs, database, services
🧪  Tester       — Tester        Tests, quality, edge cases
📋  Scribe       — (silent)      Memory, decisions, session logs
🔄  Ralph        — (monitor)     Work queue, backlog, keep-alive

Read the full file on GitHub · 105 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. yesterday First seen · 105 lines · 17 tokens per session scan A 3777cdb0f6a3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

init-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository github/gh-aw (5,091 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 17 tokens to every session and 1,749 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 2026-09-03.