knowledge-layers

knowledge-layers is a skill for Claude Code from haowjy/creative-writing-skills. It costs 32 tokens per session (1,176 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for deciding where project knowledge belongs: AGENTS.md, .context/, a knowledge base, docs/, or a temporary work folder. AGENTS.md gives directory-level guidance, while the other locations hold deeper, shared, user-facing, or temporary information.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating, editing, or reviewing project instructions, architecture notes, deferred work, shared decisions, user documentation, or temporary design notes.
Why use it?
It prevents instructions and decisions from being scattered in the wrong files. That makes durable project knowledge easier for coding agents and developers to find and maintain.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions AGENTS.md.

Part of the cw plugin — 24 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when creating, editing, or reviewing project instructions, architecture notes, deferred work, shared decisions, user documentation, or temporary design notes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/haowjy/creative-writing-skills/knowledge-layers
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 haowjy/creative-writing-skills --skill knowledge-layers
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/haowjy/creative-writing-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install cw, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 24 skills.

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 knowledge-layers

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/haowjy/creative-writing-skills/knowledge-layers/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/haowjy/creative-writing-skills/knowledge-layers)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/haowjy/creative-writing-skills/knowledge-layers"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/haowjy/creative-writing-skills/knowledge-layers/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 knowledge-layers

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/haowjy/creative-writing-skills/knowledge-layers"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/haowjy/creative-writing-skills/knowledge-layers.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,176 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00032 $0.01176
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00588
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00235
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00118

Measured 10d ago against content hash be113c2359e5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

knowledge-layers 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.

cw/skills/knowledge-layers/SKILL.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Knowledge Layers

Load /qi-layer when writing or editing AGENTS.md or .context/ files: it owns the craft (four principles, contents guidelines, what doesn't belong). Load /information-hierarchy if not already loaded for disclosure tiers. Load /llm-writing if not already loaded.

The Five Layers

Layer What it holds When to use it
AGENTS.md Intent and mental model for a directory First thing agents read on entry; what to understand before working here
.context/ Contracts, architecture, rationale (CONTEXT.md); deferred work (TODO, FUTURE) Reference depth and tracked deferrals, co-located with the code they describe
KB Cross-cutting decisions, domain concepts, patterns Spans directories; outlives sessions; no single directory owns it
docs/ User-facing documentation Different audience, different update cadence
Work directory Temporary design decisions and scratch Not colocated with durable content; scoped to an active work item

Placement Rules

If it's intent/mental-model for a directory → AGENTS.md. If it's directory-scoped depth an agent looks up → .context/. If it's deferred work scoped to this directory → .context/TODO (must-do) or .context/FUTURE (nice-to-have). Flat markdown lists — each entry names the affected path and concrete follow-up. Cross-cutting items or items needing external visibility get filed in the project's issue tracker instead. If it's big picture — cross-cutting decisions, domain concepts, higher-level system architecture → KB. If it's for end users → docs/. If it's a temporary work artifact → work directory.

When in doubt, colocate. Knowledge that depends on one subsystem belongs in that subsystem's AGENTS.md or .context/ even when it reads like a concept; the KB stays code-agnostic, holding what survives implementation change. Knowledge that lives far from what it describes rots faster: changes to the code don't trigger awareness that a distant doc needs updating.

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 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 · 109 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A be113c2359e5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

knowledge-layers is a skill published in the GitHub repository haowjy/creative-writing-skills (453 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 1,176 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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