skill-authoring

skill-authoring is a skill for Claude Code from jakesterns/agent-skills. It costs 30 tokens per session (287 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for creating or improving Markdown instructions that teach an AI agent a reusable task.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to draft skill files, improve metadata and trigger phrases, organise examples and references, validate file structure, and suggest tests.
Why use it?
It helps make skills concise, easy to find, triggered by the right requests, and useful in practice instead of filled with general advice.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the skill-authoring plugin — 1 skill shipped together

Good fit Use it to draft skill files, improve metadata and trigger phrases, organise examples and references, validate file structure, and suggest tests.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jakesterns/agent-skills/skill-authoring
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 jakesterns/agent-skills --skill skill-authoring
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jakesterns/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skill-authoring, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill.

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 skill-authoring

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jakesterns/agent-skills/skill-authoring.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jakesterns/agent-skills/skill-authoring)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jakesterns/agent-skills/skill-authoring"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jakesterns/agent-skills/skill-authoring.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 30 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 287 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 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 $0.00030 $0.00287
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00143
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00057
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00029

Measured 8d ago against content hash 85252054cc58, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

skill-authoring 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 8d 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.

plugins/skill-authoring/skills/skill-authoring/SKILL.md · 41 lines

What it actually says

Skill Authoring

Use this skill when creating or improving an AI agent skill, prompt package, or reusable markdown workflow.

Inputs

  • Skill goal, target users, expected trigger phrases, examples, draft markdown, or existing skill folder
  • Target providers or compatibility requirements

Steps

  1. Clarify the task the skill should handle and when an agent should use it.
  2. Write a description that includes the action, domain, and trigger conditions.
  3. Keep the body concise: inputs, steps, outputs, and guidelines.
  4. Add tags that improve search and filtering.
  5. Add provider metadata when the skill is compatible across agents.
  6. Move detailed examples or long reference material into reference files when needed.
  7. Validate frontmatter, file naming, category placement, and discoverability.
  8. Review whether the skill gives useful procedural knowledge rather than generic advice.

Output

Return:

  • Improved skill markdown or review notes
  • Metadata recommendations
  • Trigger and searchability improvements
  • Validation issues
  • Suggested tests or example prompts

Guidelines

  • Prefer concrete workflows over broad principles.
  • Avoid bloated skills that consume context without improving execution.
  • Make the skill useful to an autonomous agent, not just a human reader.
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. 8d ago First seen · 41 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A 85252054cc58

Subscribe to this mod's changes

skill-authoring is a skill published in the GitHub repository jakesterns/agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 30 tokens to every session and 287 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

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