create-skill

create-skill is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jasonkneen/lazar. It costs 0 tokens per session (390 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for creating a new coding-agent skill when the existing skill catalogue has no suitable match. It explains how to define, store, register, and check the skill.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create skills for recurring workflows, name and structure their instruction files, add them to the skill index, and verify the result.
Why use it?
It prevents repeated multi-step work from being lost and helps fill gaps in an agent's capabilities with small, reusable instructions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to create skills for recurring workflows, name and structure their…

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

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 create-skill

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/create-skill.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/create-skill)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/create-skill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/create-skill.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 390 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 $0.00000 $0.00390
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00195
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00078
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00039

Measured 7d ago against content hash 7a5e1f3ae857, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

create-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 7d 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.

src/seed-skills/_meta/create-skill/SKILL.md · 53 lines

What it actually says

create-skill

When you need a capability that isn't in INDEX.md, author a new skill.

When to use

  • INDEX.md has nothing relevant.
  • An existing skill could be adapted but doesn't fit the current need cleanly.
  • You found yourself doing the same multi-step bash dance twice; capture it.

How to use

  1. Confirm the gap:

    cat $LAZAR_HOME/skills/INDEX.md
    
  2. Pick a short, descriptive kebab-case name (e.g. web-search, file-watch, git-status).

  3. Create the skill folder and SKILL.md:

    mkdir -p $LAZAR_HOME/skills/<name>
    cat > $LAZAR_HOME/skills/<name>/SKILL.md <<'EOF'
    # <name>
    
    <one-line purpose>
    
    ## When to use
    <triggers — what situation calls for this skill>
    
    ## How to use
    <ordered steps the next invocation will follow>
    
    ## Recipe
    <copy-pasteable bash; assume the agent runs it verbatim>
    EOF
    
  4. Register it in the index:

    echo "- <name> — <one-line purpose>" >> $LAZAR_HOME/skills/INDEX.md
    
  5. Verify:

    cat $LAZAR_HOME/skills/INDEX.md
    cat $LAZAR_HOME/skills/<name>/SKILL.md
    

Principles

  • Skills should be small. If a skill does two things, split it.
  • Prefer composition: existing skills + bash + lazar -p recursion.
  • Bash-first. If the recipe can't be expressed in bash, the skill is too big.
  • Document the failure modes you hit while designing it. Future-you will thank you.
  • Skills go in $LAZAR_HOME/skills/. Never write outside that tree to extend your capabilities.
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. 7d ago First seen · 53 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 7a5e1f3ae857

Subscribe to this mod's changes

create-skill is a skill published in the GitHub repository jasonkneen/lazar (31 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 390 tokens. 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.

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