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.
npx skills add jamiemill/layers-skills --skill layers-user-needsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jamiemill/layers-skillsWrote 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/jamiemill/layers-skills/layers-user-needs)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamiemill/layers-skills/layers-user-needs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamiemill/layers-skills/layers-user-needs/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/jamiemill/layers-skills/layers-user-needs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamiemill/layers-skills/layers-user-needs.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Socket pass
- Snyk pass
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 | $0.00027 | $0.00987 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00011 | $0.00395 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00197 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00099 |
Grade A, and why
layers-user-needs 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 2mo 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 — 63 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
/layers-user-needs
Assumes /layers-intro has been loaded. This skill is a library of techniques, not a script — see "How to use these skills" there.
User needs are what we think users are trying to achieve, and why — an interpretation built on observed behaviour and domain knowledge, not a direct capture of reality. This layer sits between the messy raw material of observation and the deliberate decisions of the solution space.
The outputs here are opportunities: needs (what users want to achieve), pains (what causes friction), and desires (improvements they'd value). All three are valid — elicit all three.
The decisions this layer makes
- Who exactly the users are whose needs we're defining — and in what situation
- What jobs they're trying to do: functional, emotional, and social
- Which needs are grounded in evidence, and which are assumptions
- Which needs matter most, and why
If the needs are already clear and grounded, don't re-elicit them for the sake of it — take them to /layers-product-strategy.
Disciplines — what keeps needs honest
- Need, not solution. "When I need a report, I want to export to CSV" is a solution. Push to the underlying need.
- Strip the mechanism. If the "When" clause references your specific solution (your dashboard, your CSM, your weekly email), you're describing the current system, not the need. Re-state it independent of who or what serves it: what's true about the user at the moment they need this? The need follows from the state, not the mechanism.
- The "When" must be picturable. Specific enough to see the moment it happens — triggered by an event, a feeling, a rhythm, or a threshold crossed. Push until it is.
- Elicit emotional and social jobs, not just functional. They're chronically under-articulated even when they're shaping behaviour. Asking explicitly is usually what surfaces them. (Functional → interaction & model; emotional → surface tone/feedback; social → surface, sometimes strategy.)
- Mark confidence: observed / inferred / assumed.
- Workarounds are signal. A need real enough to motivate a spreadsheet or a workaround email is a strong one.
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.
- 2mo ago First seen · 63 lines · 27 tokens per session scan A 05b7bd8e224a
layers-user-needs is a skill published in the GitHub repository jamiemill/layers-skills (314 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 987 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.
layers-user-needs compared with skills from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| layers-user-needsjamiemill/layers-skills | Skill | 314 | 5mo ago | MIT | A | 27 | Claude Code, Codex |
| imagegenopenai/codex | Skill | 133k | yesterday | Apache-2.0 | A | 113 | Codex |
| playwright-climicrosoft/playwright | Skill | 99k | yesterday | Apache-2.0 | A | 19 | Claude Code |
| local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners | Skill | 79k | 4d ago | MIT | A | 200 | Claude Code, Codex |
| systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers | Skill | 313k | 3d ago | MIT | A | 21 | Claude Code |
| next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js | Skill | 143k | yesterday | MIT | A | 95 | Claude Code |
| next-partial-prefetching-adoptionvercel/next.js | Skill | 143k | yesterday | MIT | A | 103 | Claude Code |