boron-letters

boron-letters is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills. It costs 77 tokens per session (4,891 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing guide based on Gary Halbert’s book The Boron Letters, focused on direct-response copywriting—the kind of writing meant to prompt a measurable action such as a purchase or reply.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write sales letters, emails, and ads; create headlines; build and divide mailing lists; and review copy that is not converting.
Why use it?
It gives a structured way to improve copy that is not getting attention or action, especially by focusing on the audience, headlines, and mailing lists.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Good fit Use it to write sales letters, emails, and ads; create headlines; build and divide mailing lists; and review copy that is not converting.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills/boron-letters
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 guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills --skill boron-letters
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills

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 boron-letters

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills/boron-letters/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills/boron-letters)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills/boron-letters"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills/boron-letters/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 boron-letters

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills/boron-letters"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills/boron-letters.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 77 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,891 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.
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 $0.00077 $0.04891
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.02446
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00978
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00489

Measured 12d ago against content hash 53f86930a702, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

boron-letters 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.

skills/content/boron-letters/SKILL.md · 816 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 816 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Boron Letters Copywriting

Master Gary Halbert's direct response copywriting principles from "The Boron Letters" (1984). The timeless fundamentals that separate pros from amateurs.

When to Use This Skill

  • Writing direct response copy (sales letters, emails, ads)
  • Creating headlines that demand attention
  • Building mailing lists and segmentation
  • Improving copy through the A-pile test
  • Learning copywriting fundamentals from scratch
  • Diagnosing why copy isn't converting

Methodology Foundation

Source: Gary Halbert - "The Boron Letters" (1984)

Core Principle: "Become a student of markets, not products." The list matters more than the copy. The A-pile beats the B-pile. Long copy outsells short. And the fundamentals of human psychology never change.

Why This Matters: These letters were written in the 1980s but remain the gold standard for direct response copywriting. Halbert's "coat of arms" letter mailed over 600 million times. The principles work because they're based on human psychology, not trends.

What Claude Does vs What You Decide

Claude Does You Decide
Structures production workflow Final creative direction
Suggests technical approaches Equipment and tool choices
Creates templates and checklists Quality standards
Identifies best practices Brand/voice decisions
Generates script outlines Final script approval

What This Skill Does

  1. Applies the A-pile test - Gets mail opened and read
  2. Identifies starving crowds - Finds markets hungry to buy
  3. Uses the AIDA formula - Structures persuasive copy
  4. Writes irresistible headlines - Stops readers cold
  5. Creates long-form sales copy - Converts readers to buyers

How to Use

Apply the A-Pile Test

Review this email/letter through Halbert's A-pile framework:
[paste copy]
Will it get opened? Will it get read? What's missing?

Write Sales Copy

Write a Halbert-style sales letter for:
Product: [description]
Target market: [who]
Main pain point: [problem]
Unique mechanism: [how it works]

Read the full file on GitHub · 816 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. 12d ago First seen · 816 lines · 77 tokens per session scan A 53f86930a702

Subscribe to this mod's changes

boron-letters is a skill published in the GitHub repository guia-matthieu/clawfu-skills (149 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 77 tokens to every session and 4,891 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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