using-adept

A guide to the adept command-line tool, which lets you write an AI coding skill once and generate versions for several coding-agent tools. It also explains how to keep those versions synchronized.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when installing or syncing skills, editing SKILL.md or skill.yaml files, or working with adeptability configuration.
Why use it?
It removes the need to maintain separate copies of the same instructions for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, OpenCode, and similar tools.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/itaywol/adeptability/using-adept
Any agent
npx skills add itaywol/adeptability --skill using-adept
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/itaywol/adeptability

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,395 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00054 $0.01395
Opus 5 $0.00027 $0.00698
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00279
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00139

Measured 2d ago against content hash 93fb11f7fd46, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

using-adept 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 2d 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.

.adeptability/base/using-adept/SKILL.md · 126 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 126 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Using the adept CLI

adept makes one AI skill portable across every coding harness. You author once in a canonical format; adept renders accurately into each harness's native layout and keeps both sides in sync.

Mental model

canonical skill  ──render──▶  .claude/skills/…   (per-skill)
(.adeptability/  ──render──▶  .cursor/rules/….mdc (single-file)
 skills/<id>/    ──render──▶  AGENTS.md            (Codex aggregate)
 SKILL.md)       ──render──▶  .github/instructions (Copilot aggregate)
                 ◀─sync-from─  (adopt edits made directly in a harness file)
  • Identity is (id, content-hash) — there are no version numbers. The hash decides whether something changed.
  • A skill is a directory <root>/skills/<id>/ with one SKILL.md (YAML frontmatter + markdown body) and optional sidecars (scripts/, references/, assets/).
  • The filesystem is the source of truth. config.json only records which harnesses are enabled, the materialization mode, and library remotes.

Canonical SKILL.md format

---
id: pr-review                 # ^[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]{0,48}[a-z0-9])?$ — matches the directory name
description: Use before opening a PR. Tests, security, performance.   # <= 280 chars
activation: agent             # always | globs | agent | manual
globs: []                     # REQUIRED when activation: globs
allowed-tools: [Read, Grep]   # carried into Claude Code
targets: []                   # empty = all enabled harnesses
tags: [review, quality]
---
# PR Review Checklist
- [ ] Tests added or updated
- [ ] No secrets in the diff

The commands you'll use most

adept init                       # scaffold .adeptability/ in the current project
adept init --from <git-url>      # …and clone a remote skill library to pull skills from
adept harness add claude-code    # enable a harness (claude-code | cursor | codex | copilot | opencode)
adept harness list
adept sync                       # render canonical skills → every enabled harness
adept status                     # init state, libraries, harnesses, and drift at a glance
adept diff                       # show exactly what differs between canonical and rendered
adept sync-from                  # adopt edits made directly in a harness file back to canonical

Read the full file on GitHub · 126 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 126 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 93fb11f7fd46

Subscribe to this mod's changes

using-adept is a skill published in the GitHub repository itaywol/adeptability (9 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 1,395 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

skillpack-creator

Create a reusable SkillPack from a successful completed task. Use when the user wants to convert a one-off research, coding, analysis, or content workflow into a distributable local SkillPack with skillpack.json, local skills under skills/, starter prompts, start scripts, and an optional zip package.

CreminiAI/skillpack · 67 tokens

skill-creator

Create new skills, modify and improve existing skills, and measure skill performance. Use when users want to create a skill from scratch, edit, or optimize an existing skill, run evals to test a skill, benchmark skill performance with variance analysis, or optimize a skill's description for better triggering accuracy.

CreminiAI/skillpack · 64 tokens

rove

Use when controlling Rove tasks, parallel coding attempts, hosted agent sessions, task lifecycle, or the daemon-owned issue tracker from a shell. Also the ONLY channel for messaging another agent session on this machine — rove api send, never a peer/MCP side channel.

Sma1lboy/rove · 56 tokens

general-video

The fallback workflow for authoring custom HyperFrames video compositions at any length or format — longer or multi-scene pieces, brand / sizzle reels, montages, title cards, static loops, and freeform compositions. Input- and length-agnostic. If a specialized workflow clearly fits the input — a marketed product, a…

Sma1lboy/rove · 114 tokens

pr-review

AUTHOR SKILL (internal to microsoft/aspire-skills). Reviews pull requests into this repo for problems only — bugs, regressions, missing eval coverage, frontmatter or routing damage, plugin-manifest drift, hook safety, and other concrete issues. Drives a six-step workflow: identify the PR, ensure the branch is…

microsoft/aspire-skills · 241 tokens

release

Autonomously cut a Rove (@sma1lboy/rove) release end-to-end — detect the semver bump from pending changesets (flagging an upstream minor you didn't intend), run the release gates, bump/tag/push via scripts/release.sh, then poll the GitHub Actions Release workflow with gh until npm publish completes, diagnosing CI…

Sma1lboy/rove · 155 tokens