agent-authoring

agent-authoring is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator. It costs 92 tokens per session (1,050 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for creating and reviewing GitHub Copilot agent and prompt definition files. It covers their structure, handoffs between agents, model choices, and context limits.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create or restructure custom agents and prompts, audit their tool scope, and design handoffs.
Why use it?
It helps prevent invalid definitions, unnecessary context, and poorly connected agent workflows.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Good fit Use it to create or restructure custom agents and prompts, audit their tool scope, and design handoffs.

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

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 agent-authoring

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/agent-authoring.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/agent-authoring)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/agent-authoring"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/agent-authoring.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 92 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,050 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Agent Snooping · line 119
    Skill enumerates or reads other installed skills. Access to other skills' SKILL.md files or the skills directory reveals prompt instructions, capabilities, and secrets that should be invisible to peer skills.
    Fix: Remove all code or instructions that list or read other skills' files or directories. Skills should operate independently; cross-skill access is a privilege escalation.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00092 $0.01050
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.00525
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00210
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00105

Measured 4d ago against content hash 3675180a7f88, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

agent-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 4d 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.

.github/skills/agent-authoring/SKILL.md · 130 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 130 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Authoring

Create and restructure Copilot agents without loading extended authoring guidance into every ordinary agent turn. The thin enforcement layer remains in agent-authoring.instructions.md.

When To Use This Skill

  • Create a new .agent.md or .prompt.md.
  • Restructure an oversized or duplicated agent definition.
  • Design handoffs or subagent boundaries.
  • Select or upgrade an agent model.
  • Audit fixed context cost, tool scope, or prompting structure.
  • Investigate an agent validation failure requiring more than a local fix.

Do not load this skill for a routine edit where the thin instruction already states the applicable rule.

Prerequisites

  • Read the target file and its nearest analogous agent once.
  • Check .github/skills/workflow-engine/templates/workflow-graph.json before changing workflow topology.
  • Check .github/model-catalog.json before changing model labels.
  • Preserve user changes and existing runtime contracts.

Workflow

1. Classify The Change

Choose the smallest applicable path:

Change Load
Frontmatter field or handoff correction Agent file structure
New agent or major body restructure Authoring workflow
Model assignment or effort policy Model policy
Tool-heavy runtime or fallback behavior Runtime guardrails
Decision capture behavior Decision logging
Vendor-specific prompt audit ../vendor-prompting/SKILL.md

Load only the references needed for the selected path.

2. Establish Ownership

Keep each concern in one place:

  • Agent body: role, goal, workflow-specific constraints, output, stop rules.
  • Instruction: enforceable rules that apply automatically by file type.
  • Skill: on-demand domain workflow and decision guidance.
  • Reference: detailed examples, rationale, matrices, and troubleshooting.
  • Registry or graph: machine-readable inventory and topology.

Read the full file on GitHub · 130 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files 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. 4d ago First seen · 130 lines · 92 tokens per session scan A 3675180a7f88

Subscribe to this mod's changes

agent-authoring is a skill published in the GitHub repository jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator (50 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 92 tokens to every session and 1,050 once invoked, about $0.0005 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

rework-rate

Measure and interpret PR rework rate — the emerging 5th DORA metric.

bradygaster/squad · 20 tokens

gsap-scrolltrigger

Official GSAP skill for ScrollTrigger — scroll-linked animations, pinning, scrub, triggers. Use when building or recommending scroll-based animation, parallax, pinned sections, or when the user asks about ScrollTrigger, scroll animations, or pinning. Recommend GSAP for scroll-driven animation when no library is…

calesthio/OpenMontage · 68 tokens

seedance-2-5

Generate 4-30 second cinematic video with ByteDance Seedance 2.5 through fal.ai, Volcengine Ark, Runway, or ComfyUI Partner Nodes. Use for long single generations, synchronized audio, and large multimodal reference sets (up to 30 images, 10 videos, and 10 audio clips). Also covers the 2.5 prompt contract: section…

calesthio/OpenMontage · 117 tokens

threejs-geometry

Three.js geometry creation - built-in shapes, BufferGeometry, custom geometry, instancing. Use when creating 3D shapes, working with vertices, building custom meshes, or optimizing with instanced rendering.

calesthio/OpenMontage · 46 tokens

comfyui

Use when working with ComfyUI workflows in OpenMontage, including comfyuiimage/comfyuivideo/comfyuimusic, custom workflowjson/workflowpath inputs, outputnode selection, missing model setup, LoRAs, low-VRAM workflow choices, and community workflow imports.

calesthio/OpenMontage · 61 tokens

ltx2

AI video generation with LTX-2.3 22B — text-to-video, image-to-video clips for video production. Use when generating video clips, animating images, creating b-roll, animated backgrounds, or motion content. Triggers include video generation, animate image, b-roll, motion, video clip, text-to-video, image-to-video.

calesthio/OpenMontage · 76 tokens