distill

distill is a skill for Claude Code from hanyuancheung/llm-skill. It costs 2 tokens per session (1,147 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for turning recorded conversations, mistakes, and good practices into reusable instructions called skills.

In plain words
What is it for?
It can create, update, merge, deprecate, or discard skills, then notify the routing guide when its skill catalogue needs updating.
Why use it?
It preserves lessons that may otherwise be forgotten and helps keep overlapping instructions accurate and organized.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: hooks in frontmatter.

Good fit It can create, update, merge, deprecate, or discard skills, then notify the routing guide when its skill catalogue needs updating.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/hanyuancheung/llm-skill/distill
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 hanyuancheung/llm-skill --skill distill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hanyuancheung/llm-skill

Made for: Claude Code.

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 distill

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hanyuancheung/llm-skill/distill/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/hanyuancheung/llm-skill/distill)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hanyuancheung/llm-skill/distill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hanyuancheung/llm-skill/distill/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 distill

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hanyuancheung/llm-skill/distill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hanyuancheung/llm-skill/distill.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 2 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,147 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 $0.00002 $0.01147
Opus 5 $0.00001 $0.00574
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00229
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00115

Measured 10d ago against content hash 306c0a0062cb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

distill 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 10d 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/distill/SKILL.md · 128 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 128 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

distill — Distillation Meta-Skill

What

Turn Raw-layer traces (conversation, pitfalls, best practices) into Wiki-layer skills, or CRUD existing ones, then notify guide to update the routing table.

When to use

  • execute reports a non-empty distill-candidates.
  • ✅ User says "distill / remember / write it as a skill".
  • ✅ Two skills overlap or conflict and need merging.

When NOT to use

  • ❌ One-off incidents judged "won't recur".
  • ❌ A tiny correction does not warrant a new skill (update the existing one).

How (SOP)

Phase 1: classify

For each candidate:

Situation Action
No routing hit + reusable Create a new skill
Hit exists but record is inaccurate/incomplete Update
Two skills overlap in responsibility Merge, deprecate the loser
Not matched for 2 cycles Deprecate
One-off, non-generalizable Discard

Phase 2: write/revise (follow Schema)

Adhere to AGENT.md §3 SKILL.md contract. Core requirements:

  1. Naming: kebab-case, verb-domain or domain-action, e.g. review-go-pr, debug-cuda-oom.
  2. Complete front-matter: name/version/status/triggers/dependencies/owner/updated — all required.
  3. Six required sections: What / When / How / Examples / Pitfalls / Changelog.
  4. Every Pitfall must come from a real trace, never fabricated.
  5. If > 500 lines, spill references into references/.

Phase 3: version & status

  • New: version: 0.1.0, status: experimental.
  • Revision:
    • Minor fix → patch (0.1.0 → 0.1.1)
    • New How step → minor (0.1.0 → 0.2.0)
    • Contract/trigger change → major (0.1.0 → 1.0.0), document migration in Changelog.
  • After the 2nd independent reuse, experimental → active.

Phase 4: notify Guide

After distillation, trigger guide to:

  • Update AGENT.md §2.2 registry.
  • Check dependency fan-in for ripple changes.

Distill Quality Bar

Before a candidate lands as a skill, self-check:

  1. Reusable: will a similar task genuinely reach for this again?
  2. Teachable: can How be stated in ≤ 10 lines?
  3. Falsifiable: can every Pitfall be stated as "if A then B"?
  4. Orthogonal: non-overlapping with existing skills?

Read the full file on GitHub · 128 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 10d ago First seen · 128 lines · 2 tokens per session scan A 306c0a0062cb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

distill is a skill published in the GitHub repository hanyuancheung/llm-skill (22 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 2 tokens to every session and 1,147 once invoked, about $0.0000 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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