user-input-protocol

user-input-protocol is a skill for Claude Code from JustineDevs/premortem. It costs 184 tokens per session (2,028 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A protocol for pausing an agent at decisions that require human judgement. It specifies how to explain the choice, show labelled options and consequences, recommend an option, and wait for an answer.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when an agent needs approval for an ambiguous requirement, a trade-off, a scope choice, or an irreversible operation.
Why use it?
It prevents an agent from guessing about business rules, architecture, scope, or destructive actions. This keeps consequential decisions under the developer’s control.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: effort in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Good fit Use it when an agent needs approval for an ambiguous requirement, a trade-off, a scope choice, or an irreversible operation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/justinedevs/premortem/user-input-protocol
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 JustineDevs/premortem --skill user-input-protocol
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JustineDevs/premortem

Made for: Claude Code.

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 user-input-protocol

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/justinedevs/premortem/user-input-protocol/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/justinedevs/premortem/user-input-protocol)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/justinedevs/premortem/user-input-protocol"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/justinedevs/premortem/user-input-protocol/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for user-input-protocol

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/justinedevs/premortem/user-input-protocol"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/justinedevs/premortem/user-input-protocol.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 184 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,028 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 $0.00184 $0.02028
Opus 5 $0.00092 $0.01014
Sonnet 5 $0.00037 $0.00406
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00203

Measured 9d ago against content hash 4a3e6ebdf93b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

user-input-protocol 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 9d 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.

.agents/skills/user-input-protocol/SKILL.md · 249 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 249 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

User Input Protocol

Value: Respect -- the developer's judgment governs all consequential decisions. The agent never assumes when it should ask.

Purpose

Defines a structured format for agents to request human input at decision points. Prevents agents from making assumptions on the developer's behalf, ensures questions include enough context for informed decisions, and provides a pause-and-resume pattern for subagents that cannot directly prompt the user.

Practices

Stop and Present, Never Assume

When you encounter a decision that requires human judgment, stop working immediately. Do not guess. Do not pick the "most likely" option. Present the decision clearly and wait.

Decisions that require human input:

  • Business rule ambiguities (two valid interpretations exist)
  • Architecture trade-offs (performance vs. simplicity, etc.)
  • Scope questions (should this feature include X?)
  • Destructive actions (deleting files, force-pushing, dropping data)

Decisions that do NOT require human input:

  • Implementation details with one clearly correct answer
  • Formatting, naming, or style choices covered by project conventions
  • Test structure when requirements are unambiguous

Use the AWAITING_USER_INPUT Format

When you need input, output this structured checkpoint:

AWAITING_USER_INPUT
---
Context: [Why you are asking -- what you were doing and what you found]
Decision needed: [The specific question, one sentence]
Options:
  A) [Label] -- [What this means and its implications]
  B) [Label] -- [What this means and its implications]
  C) [Label] -- [What this means and its implications]
Recommendation: [Which option you suggest and why, or "No recommendation"]
---

Rules for the checkpoint:

  • Context must explain what led to this question (not just "I need input")
  • Provide 2-4 specific options. Never ask open-ended "what should I do?"
  • Each option must include implications, not just a label
  • State your recommendation if you have one -- the developer can override

Read the full file on GitHub · 249 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.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 249 lines · 184 tokens per session scan A 4a3e6ebdf93b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

user-input-protocol is a skill published in the GitHub repository JustineDevs/premortem (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 184 tokens to every session and 2,028 once invoked, about $0.0009 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

awesome-azd-template-submit

Submit an azd template to the awesome-azd gallery. Use when asked to submit, add, or contribute a template to awesome-azd. Requires only a GitHub repository URL — all metadata (title, description, languages, frameworks, Azure services, IaC) is auto-detected by the submission pipeline.

Azure/awesome-azd · 72 tokens

azure-cli

Use the Azure CLI to manage subscriptions, resource groups, AKS, App Service, Key Vault, and role assignments.

alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills · 27 tokens

bitbottle

Reference for the bitbottle CLI — a gh-style tool for Bitbucket Server/DC and Cloud. Load when the user asks about bitbottle commands, auth setup, PRs, repos, branches, tags, commits, pipelines, or why a command failed. Load even if the user just says "bitbottle", mentions "Bitbucket", or pastes a bitbottle error…

proggarapsody/bitbottle · 84 tokens

azure-cli

A command-line tool for managing Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform, from a terminal. It covers account sign-in, subscriptions, resource groups, virtual machines, and other cloud resources.

chaterm/terminal-skills · 7 tokens

extract-api

This skill should be used when the user asks to "extract API from", "import API from", "add commands from this repo", "register API from docs", "convert docs to CLI commands", "import Postman collection", or provides a GitHub repository URL, a documentation site URL, a Postman collection file/URL, or a local API…

hesedcasa/sdkck · 86 tokens

sidekick

ALWAYS run sdkck search FIRST before using ANY tool, MCP server, Bash command, or external API. sdkck is the canonical command surface for Jira, Sentry, MySQL, Postgres, Supabase, Bitbucket, Confluence, and imported OpenAPI/Postman specs. Trigger on every task involving external systems, APIs, databases, tickets…

hesedcasa/sdkck · 100 tokens