What is ia-file-todos?

A file-based task tracker that stores work items as Markdown files in a todos/ directory. Each file records a task's status, priority, dependencies, findings, proposed solutions, and acceptance criteria.

Use it to create, triage, list, update, and complete development tasks, including tasks made from pull-request comments and tasks blocked by other work.

It keeps unfinished work visible and gives tasks a consistent format. It also prevents review comments and backlog items from being lost in chat or pull requests.

ia-file-todos — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by iliaal

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 iliaal/whetstone --skill ia-file-todos

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iliaal/whetstone

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install whetstone, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills, 22 commands, 19 agents, 1 hook, 1 MCP server.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/ia-file-todos/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/ia-file-todos)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/ia-file-todos"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/ia-file-todos/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/ia-file-todos"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/ia-file-todos.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 53 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 619 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 95% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00053	$0.00619
Opus 5	$0.00026	$0.00309
Sonnet 5	$0.00011	$0.00124
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00062

Measured 4d ago against content hash 053f109ae3c0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ia-file-todos 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 4d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

95% identical to file-todos — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/whetstone/skills/ia-file-todos/SKILL.md · 66 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 66 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

File-based todo tracking

File naming convention

{issue_id}-{status}-{priority}-{description}.md

issue_id: Sequential number (001, 002, 003...) -- never reused
status: pending (needs triage), ready (approved), complete (done)
priority: p1 (critical), p2 (important), p3 (nice-to-have). Mapping from the ia-code-review severity scale: Critical→p1, Important→p2, Medium→p3, Minor→p3.
description: kebab-case, brief description

Examples: 001-pending-p1-mailer-test.md, 002-ready-p1-fix-n-plus-1.md, 005-complete-p2-refactor-csv.md

File Structure

Use todo-template.md as a starting point. YAML frontmatter:

---
status: ready              # pending | ready | complete
priority: p1               # p1 | p2 | p3
issue_id: "002"
tags: [typescript, performance, database]
dependencies: ["001"]      # Issue IDs this is blocked by
---

Required sections: Problem Statement, Findings, Proposed Solutions, Recommended Action, Acceptance Criteria, Work Log

Optional sections: Technical Details, Resources, Notes

Key Distinctions

File-todos system (this skill): Markdown files in todos/ directory for development/project tracking. Used by humans and agents.

Application Todo model: Database model for user-facing task management. Different from this file-based system.

TodoWrite tool: In-memory task tracking during agent sessions. Temporary, not persisted to disk.

Verify

Before considering a todo file correctly written, confirm:

issue_id is unique and sequentially the next number in todos/ (never reused).
All required frontmatter fields are present: status, priority, issue_id.
status and priority values match the filename and their enums (pending|ready|complete, p1|p2|p3).

References

workflows.md - Creating, triaging, dependencies, work logs, completing todos, integration table
quick-reference.md - Bash commands for finding work, dependencies, searching
todo-template.md - Template for new todo files

Read the full file on GitHub · 66 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files 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.

4d ago First seen · 66 lines · 53 tokens per session scan A 053f109ae3c0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ia-file-todos is a skill published in the GitHub repository iliaal/whetstone (33 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 53 tokens to every session and 619 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 95% identical to file-todos, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Claude Code Code review Project management agent-skills ai-agents ai-tools claude-code-plugin

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