squid-write-skill

squid-write-skill is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from iusztinpaul/squid. It costs 24 tokens per session (2,147 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of writing-great-skills, Apache-2.0.

A reference for writing and editing skills that guide coding agents. It explains how to make those instructions predictable and decide whether the agent or the user should activate them.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating, reviewing, or improving skill instructions, especially their descriptions, activation wording, and step-by-step processes.
Why use it?
It helps reduce inconsistent results caused by unclear instructions or poorly chosen activation rules. It also explains the trade-off between keeping a skill available automatically and requiring the user to call it.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the squid plugin — 16 skills, 5 agents shipped together

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/iusztinpaul/squid/squid-write-skill
Any agent
npx skills add iusztinpaul/squid --skill squid-write-skill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iusztinpaul/squid

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install squid, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 5 agents.

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 squid-write-skill

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iusztinpaul/squid/squid-write-skill.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/iusztinpaul/squid/squid-write-skill)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/iusztinpaul/squid/squid-write-skill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iusztinpaul/squid/squid-write-skill.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,147 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 98% 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00024 $0.02147
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.01073
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00429
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00215

Measured 5d ago against content hash 4eaa19fa00dd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

squid-write-skill 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 5d 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

98% identical to writing-great-skills — 7 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.

skills/squid-write-skill/SKILL.md · 88 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 88 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

A skill exists to wrangle determinism out of a stochastic system. Predictability — the agent taking the same process every run, not producing the same output — is the root virtue; every lever below serves it.

Bold terms are defined in GLOSSARY.md; look them up there for the full meaning.

Invocation

Two choices, trading different costs:

  • A model-invoked skill keeps a description, so the agent can fire it autonomously and other skills can reach it (you can still type its name too). It contributes to context load — the description sits in the window every turn. Mechanics: omit disable-model-invocation, and write a model-facing description with rich trigger phrasing ("Use when the user wants…, mentions…").
  • A user-invoked skill strips the description from the agent's reach: only you, typing its name, can invoke it — and no other skill can. Zero context load, but it spends cognitive load: you are the index that must remember it exists. Mechanics: set disable-model-invocation: true; the description becomes human-facing — a one-line summary, trigger lists stripped.

Pick model-invocation only when the agent must reach the skill on its own, or another skill must. If it only ever fires by hand, make it user-invoked and pay no context load.

When user-invoked skills multiply past what you can remember, that piled-up cognitive load is cured by a router skill: one user-invoked skill that names the others and when to reach for each.

Writing the description

A model-invoked description does two jobs — state what the skill is, and list the branches that should trigger it. Every word increases context load, so a description earns even harder pruning than the body:

  • Front-load the skill's leading word — the description is where it does its invocation work.
  • One trigger per branch. Synonyms that rename a single branch are duplication — "build features using TDD … asks for test-first development" is one branch written twice. Collapse them; keep only genuinely distinct branches.
  • Cut identity that's already in the body. Keep the description to triggers, plus any "when another skill needs…" reach clause.

Read the full file on GitHub · 88 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. 5d ago First seen · 88 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A 4eaa19fa00dd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

squid-write-skill is a skill published in the GitHub repository iusztinpaul/squid (184 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 2,147 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 98% identical to writing-great-skills, differing in 7 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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