A task-execution helper for SAM, a system that organizes development work into plans and tasks. It claims a task, loads its instructions, applies the acceptance criteria, and marks the task complete.

It is for picking up a specific SAM task, implementing it, and completing it through the SAM tools.

It keeps task status and working context synchronized while an agent implements planned work. This avoids losing track of which task is active or whether it is finished.

start-task — Skill for Claude Code by Jamie-BitFlight

Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add Jamie-BitFlight/claude_skills

Claude Code

/plugin install dh

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install dh, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 53 skills, 28 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamie-bitflight/claude_skills/start-task.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamie-bitflight/claude_skills/start-task)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamie-bitflight/claude_skills/start-task"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamie-bitflight/claude_skills/start-task.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,180 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00071	$0.02180
Opus 5	$0.00036	$0.01090
Sonnet 5	$0.00014	$0.00436
Haiku 4.5	$0.00007	$0.00218

Measured yesterday against content hash a578c531121b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start-task 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 yesterday.

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/development-harness/skills/start-task/SKILL.md · 196 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 196 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Start Task (SAM Task Execution Helper)

You are implementing a specific task in a SAM plan, addressed as P{id}/T{id}. The backend resolves that address and returns the task — no path is involved.

<task_input> $ARGUMENTS </task_input>

<sam_cli> uv run "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/sam_schema/cli.py" </sam_cli>

<mcp_server_scripts> SAM server: uv run --script "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/run_sam_server.py" Backlog server: uv run --script "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/run_backlog_server.py" --project-dir . </mcp_server_scripts>

MCP server availability: This skill uses mcp__plugin_dh_sam__* tools. If a tool is unavailable, see the troubleshooting steps at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/docs/mcp-connection-check.md — its commands use the <sam_cli/> and <mcp_server_scripts/> values above.

Parse Arguments

plan_address (required): plan address in P{hex} form, e.g. Pdec8934d
--task <id> (optional): Task ID to start (defaults to first ready task)
--complete <id> (optional): Task ID to mark COMPLETE

If `--complete <task-id>` Provided

Run uv run "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/sam_schema/cli.py" plan state --address P{N}/T{M} --new-status complete to mark the task complete.
Output: Task {ID} marked as complete

Starting a Task

Read the task assignment via the SAM CLI:
```
uv run "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/sam_schema/cli.py" plan read --address P{N}/T{M}
```
The response is a TaskAssignment model containing:
- plan.goal — the overall feature goal
- plan.context — plan-level context manifest (architecture decisions, codebase notes)
- task — full task details: title, requirements, constraints, acceptance criteria, verification steps
- task.skills — skill names to load before implementing
Use the address form P{N}/T{M} where N is the plan number and M is the task number from the --task argument.

1a. Discover plan artifacts via manifest (when issue number is known):

If the TaskAssignment model contains a parent_issue_number or the plan has an issue field, query the artifact manifest to discover available plan artifacts:

Read the full file on GitHub · 196 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.

yesterday First seen · 196 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A a578c531121b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start-task is a skill published in the GitHub repository Jamie-BitFlight/claude_skills (66 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 2,180 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-09-06.

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