meta-prompting

meta-prompting is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from iliaal/whetstone. It costs 104 tokens per session (948 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of commands for asking an AI coding agent to examine a problem in different ways, such as checking an answer, challenging it, comparing options, or stating assumptions. TDD, monorepos, or other domain-specific concepts are not required to use it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for code reviews, design decisions, debugging, risk checks, comparisons, and requests that need a specific output format.
Why use it?
It helps expose weak assumptions, possible failures, trade-offs, and uncertainty before you rely on an answer or make a change. It also provides stricter formats when you need a short or structured response.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it for code reviews, design decisions, debugging, risk checks, comparisons, and requests that need a specific output format.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/iliaal/whetstone/meta-prompting
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 meta-prompting
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iliaal/whetstone

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 meta-prompting

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/meta-prompting/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/meta-prompting)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/meta-prompting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/meta-prompting/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 meta-prompting

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/meta-prompting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/meta-prompting.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 104 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 948 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 $0.00104 $0.00948
Opus 5 $0.00052 $0.00474
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00190
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00095

Measured 11d ago against content hash 842acf0a0078, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

meta-prompting 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 11d 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.

distillery/generated-skills/meta-prompting/SKILL.md · 62 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 62 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Meta-Prompting

Enhanced reasoning via /commands or natural language. Commands combine left-to-right: /verify /adversarial. Auto-trigger when context warrants — note which pattern applied.

Patterns

/think | /show — Show reasoning step-by-step: decision points, alternatives considered, why each accepted/rejected. With /think doubt: after each step, flag what could be wrong and why before proceeding.

/adversarial | /argue — After answering, argue against it. 3 strongest counterarguments ranked by severity. Identify blind spots and unstated assumptions.

/constrain | /strict — Tight constraints: 3 sentences max, cite sources, no hedging. Override inline: /constrain 5 sentences.

/json | /format — Respond in valid JSON code block, no surrounding prose unless asked. Default schema:

{"analysis": "", "confidence_score": 0-100, "methodology": "", "limitations": []}

Custom keys: /json {keys: summary, risks, recommendation}

/budget | /deep — Extended thinking space (~500 words) showing dead ends and reasoning pivots, then clearly separated final answer.

/compare | /vs — Compare options as table. Default dimensions: speed, accuracy, cost, complexity, maintenance. Custom: /compare [dim1, dim2].

/confidence | /conf — Rate each claim 0-100. Flag below 70 as SPECULATIVE. Group by tier: HIGH (85+), MEDIUM (70-84), LOW (<70). Include assumptions made and rate each 1-10 on confidence.

/edge | /break — 5+ inputs/scenarios that break the approach. Code: null/empty, concurrency, overflow, encoding, auth bypass. Strategies: market conditions, timing, dependencies. Auto-triggers on: security, validation, parsing contexts.

/verify | /check — Three phases: (1) Answer direct response, (2) Challenge 3 ways it could be wrong, (3) Verify investigate each, update if needed. Mark final as VERIFIED ANSWER: or REVISED ANSWER:. Auto-triggers on: architecture decisions, critical choices, "Am I right?"

Read the full file on GitHub · 62 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. 11d ago First seen · 62 lines · 104 tokens per session scan A 842acf0a0078

Subscribe to this mod's changes

meta-prompting is a skill published in the GitHub repository iliaal/whetstone (33 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 104 tokens to every session and 948 once invoked, about $0.0005 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.

Related

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