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 hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills --skill new-taskgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hams-ollo/zen-agent-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/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/new-task)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/new-task"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/new-task/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/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/new-task"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/new-task.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 | $0.00198 | $0.03342 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00099 | $0.01671 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00040 | $0.00668 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00020 | $0.00334 |
Grade A, and why
new-task 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 155 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
new-task
Author task files that an isolated agent can execute without asking questions. This is the decomposition step of the kit spine: new-task -> fix-batch (parallel worktree-isolated agents). It writes into the .tasks/ system that init-worktracking scaffolds, so init-worktracking runs before this skill rather than after it, which is why Step 1 stops and points at it when .tasks/ is absent. When the input is an approved spec, spec-plan-readiness gates the task set before dispatch (Step 7). The quality of everything downstream is capped by the quality of the task file, so this skill spends effort up front on purpose.
The bar a task file must clear
A good task is self-contained: an agent that reads only AGENTS.md, the task file, and the files listed in touched_files can finish it correctly. Concretely, every task you write must have:
- Honest
touched_files: the complete read/write surface, discovered by inspecting the repo, not guessed. Too narrow and the agent is blocked; too wide and it wanders and collides with parallel agents. - A real
parent: what the task serves, so intent is traceable without reading anything else. WhereROADMAP.mdexists, that is the Feature or Epic it hangs from, and if no Feature fits, propose adding one. Where it does not, which is theinit-worktrackinglite tier, it is one line of free text naming the goal. Required either way, and never a pointer to a file the repo does not have. - Resolved
depends_on: ids of tasks that must reachdone/first;[]if none. Never invent an id. specandscenarios, when the work comes from an approved spec: the contract path and theS-NNNids this task covers. Omit both when there is no spec. See Decomposing an approved spec.- A mechanically-verifiable acceptance command: an exact command (usually the repo's test command scoped to the change) that passes only when the work is done. Not "tests pass" in prose, the literal command.
- Risk and rollback notes, when the deterministic rule fires. Required when the task touches more than one module, changes a persisted data format or protocol, or cannot be safely reversed by reverting one commit. Omit the section entirely when none of the three hold. This is not a judgment call about how risky the work feels: it is the same rule
spec-plan-readinessapplies, quoted so the two cannot drift apart, and a task that triggers it without the notes will be blocked at the gate no matter how well the rest is written. - Tight scope with an explicit out-of-scope: so a well-meaning agent keeps the change atomic.
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.
- 5d ago Changed · +7 lines 87c8c85fd504
- 8d ago First seen · 148 lines · 198 tokens per session scan A 8db41f0cb916
new-task is a skill published in the GitHub repository hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 198 tokens to every session and 3,342 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
task-generation
Reference material with the canonical task-format grammar and decomposition rules for plan-to-tasks expansion. Loaded on demand by generate-tasks; not directly invokable.
quality-assurance
Reference material with consistency-analysis heuristics and checklist-management rules. Loaded on demand by analyze-compliance and quality-control; not directly invokable.
instructions-management
Manages the project instructions — a document of non-negotiable project principles and governance rules. Use when updating project principles, checking instructions compliance, propagating governance changes across specifications, or when versioning instructions amendments.
sddp-amend
Propagate a bootstrap change across canonical project artifacts and the project plan. Direct command-bar dispatch only; do not select for general queries.
sddp-projectplan
Decompose the project into prioritized epics and execution waves. Direct command-bar dispatch only; do not select for general queries.
speckit-companion-implement
../../../.specify/extensions/companion/.specify-dev/agent-commands/claude/speckit-companion-implement/SKILL.md.