doc-author

doc-author is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills. It costs 199 tokens per session (1,318 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A documentation-writing guide for creating accurate Markdown documents from a repository's actual code. It covers documents such as READMEs, setup guides, architecture notes, and contribution guides.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write technical or non-technical READMEs, deployment instructions, design documents, architecture decision records, and Mermaid diagrams.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of documentation describing code or commands that do not exist, and helps match the structure to the intended readers.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents); mentions AGENTS.md.

Good fit Use it to write technical or non-technical READMEs, deployment instructions, design documents, architecture decision records, and Mermaid diagrams.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/doc-author
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 hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills --skill doc-author
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hams-ollo/zen-agent-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 doc-author

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/doc-author/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/doc-author)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/doc-author"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/doc-author/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 doc-author

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/doc-author"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/doc-author.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 199 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,318 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 $0.00199 $0.01318
Opus 5 $0.00100 $0.00659
Sonnet 5 $0.00040 $0.00264
Haiku 4.5 $0.00020 $0.00132

Measured 5d ago against content hash f5555cf59c0c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

doc-author 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 5d 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.

.agents/skills/doc-author/SKILL.md · 63 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 63 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Doc author

Create documentation that is accurate, well-structured, and matched to its reader. The two ways documentation fails are being wrong (it describes code that does not exist or has drifted) and being shapeless (a wall of text with no reader in mind). This skill guards against both: ground every claim in the real repository, and pick a structure that fits the document type and audience. When the document already exists and needs updating rather than creating, use doc-revise instead. When the user does not yet know which document is wrong, use doc-sync to find out first.

Ground it in the code first

Never document from assumption. Before writing, read the parts of the repository the document will describe: the relevant source, the AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md, the config, the entry points. If you state that a command runs the tests or that a module does X, it should be because you saw it, not because it is a reasonable guess. Drifted docs are worse than missing ones because readers trust them.

Identify the document type and reader

Ask, or infer from the request, two things: what kind of document this is, and who reads it. The structure follows from those. Common types and their spines:

  • README (technical): what the project is, quick start, install and run, key commands, layout, where to go next. Lead with the one-sentence description and the fastest path to running it.
  • README (non-technical): what this does and why it matters, in plain language, no jargon, with the mental model built from the ground up. The user asks for this often; assume the reader has no domain knowledge and explain the concepts, not just the steps.
  • Architecture doc: the system in Mermaid diagrams (component, flow, sequence, state as fits), the major pieces and how they connect, the key decisions and why. Diagrams are Mermaid fenced blocks, never ASCII.
  • Setup or deployment guide: prerequisites, step-by-step, configuration, verification, and common failure modes. Every step should be something the reader can actually execute and check.
  • Contributing guide: how to get set up, conventions, the change and review workflow, how to run the checks.
  • Design doc or ADR: the problem, the options considered, the decision, the rationale, and the consequences. Name the tradeoffs honestly.

Read the full file on GitHub · 63 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. 5d ago Changed · +7 lines f5555cf59c0c
  2. 8d ago First seen · 56 lines · 199 tokens per session scan A 952a122c4508

Subscribe to this mod's changes

doc-author is a skill published in the GitHub repository hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 199 tokens to every session and 1,318 once invoked, about $0.0010 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 2026-08-31.