Getting it into your agent
It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iliaal/whetstonenpx agentmods add skills/iliaal/whetstone/skill-distillerWrote 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/iliaal/whetstone/skill-distiller)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/skill-distiller"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/skill-distiller/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/iliaal/whetstone/skill-distiller"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/skill-distiller.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 4 findings, up to medium
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- medium MCP Rug Pull · line 36 npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
- medium MCP Rug Pull · line 38 npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
- medium Agent Snooping · line 38 Skill enumerates or reads other installed skills. Access to other skills' SKILL.md files or the skills directory reveals prompt instructions, capabilities, and secrets that should be invisible to peer skills.Fix: Remove all code or instructions that list or read other skills' files or directories. Skills should operate independently; cross-skill access is a privilege escalation.
- low Excessive Agency · line 102 Skill's behavior or capabilities extend beyond its stated purpose. Scope creep allows an agent to perform actions unrelated to its documented functionality, increasing the attack surface.Fix: Limit the skill's scope to its documented purpose. Remove instructions that enable the agent to perform actions outside its stated functionality.
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 | $0.00091 | $0.04379 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00036 | $0.01752 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00018 | $0.00876 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00438 |
Grade A, and why
skill-distiller 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 13d 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 — 252 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Skill Distiller
Fetches top-rated skills from skills.sh for a task, analyzes them, and synthesizes one token-efficient skill combining the best elements.
Modes
Distill <query>
1. Search — Find qualifying skills:
python3 distillery/scripts/distiller.py search "<query1>" "<query2>" ...
Returns JSON array of qualifying skills (filtered to installs >= 100, top 10, deduplicated). If fewer than 3 qualify, threshold drops to 50. Save this output — it feeds into Step 2.
1b. Triage before fetching — High install count does not correlate with quality. Before fetching, scan the search results: read skill descriptions and source repo names. Skip sources that are clearly generic checklists, project-specific tools, or domains outside the target skill's scope. Only fetch sources that suggest genuinely new patterns or techniques.
2. Fetch — Stage sources and compute checksums:
python3 distillery/scripts/distiller.py fetch --skills '<JSON from Step 1>'
Validates every record before any subprocess runs (skillId must be a safe lowercase segment that does not start with -; source must be owner/repo or https://github.com/owner/repo), installs each source with the pinned [email protected] CLI in its own private temp directory, stages each skill under a source-qualified key (distillery/.skill-distiller/sources/<owner>__<repo>__<skillId>--<hash>/, where <hash> disambiguates sources whose names contain __), and computes SHA-1 checksums. Returns one JSON record per input. A successful record has id, skillId, source, staging_key, installs, sha1, path, and scan. A failed record has status set to invalid, fetch_failed, missing, or scan_failed, plus error, and no path.
Fetch failures: If fetch fails or returns a record without path, report the failure and the record's error to the user, then continue without that source. Never run npx skills add directly: a manual install skips record validation, the private work directory, and the injection scan.
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.
- 13d ago Changed · +16 lines 4f7c369c19f4
- 1mo ago First seen · 236 lines · 91 tokens per session scan A 7aa0b212079b
skill-distiller is a skill published in the GitHub repository iliaal/whetstone (35 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 4,379 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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