shell

A tool for running shell commands, which are text instructions given to an operating system. It supports environment variables, command pipelines, background processes, time limits, and output capture.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to run builds, tests, scripts, and command pipelines; look up installed programs; start background work; and collect standard output and errors.
Why use it?
It gives an agent a consistent way to run and monitor commands across different operating systems. Permission checks and forbidden-command rules reduce unsafe operations.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jxoesneon/ciel/shell
Any agent
npx skills add jxoesneon/Ciel --skill shell
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jxoesneon/Ciel

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 17 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 401 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00017 $0.00401
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00200
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00080
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00040

Measured 2d ago against content hash bfc5e6bb66c7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

shell 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 2d 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.

ciel.skill/seed_skills/shell/SKILL.md · 47 lines

What it actually says

shell

Execute shell commands. All commands use the universal set defined in PLATFORM_AGNOSTIC_MAPPING.md.

Platform Agnosticism

  • Internal reasoning always uses the Universal Command Set (ls, cat, grep, etc.).
  • Internal paths always use POSIX-style forward slashes /.
  • The active adapter's shell() implementation performs OS-specific translation.

Operations

  • shell.run(cmd, cwd, env, timeout) — capture stdout/stderr/exit.
  • shell.pipe([cmd, cmd]) — piped sequences.
  • shell.bg(cmd) — background (returns handle; managed by adapter).
  • shell.which(bin) — PATH lookup.

I/O Contract

io_contract:
  input: { cmd: string, "cwd?": path, "env?": map, "timeout_s?": int }
  output: { stdout: string, stderr: string, exit: int }
  idempotent: false
  side_effects: [shell]

Safety

  • Honours host permission rules (see adapters/*/PERMISSIONS.md).
  • Refuses commands matching configuration/local/rules.config.md.forbidden_ops.
  • sudo + privileged binaries are always mid+ risk.
  • Timeouts default to acquisition.config.sandbox_limits.wall_s in sandbox contexts.
Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 2d ago First seen · 47 lines · 17 tokens per session scan A bfc5e6bb66c7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

shell is a skill published in the GitHub repository jxoesneon/Ciel (1 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 17 tokens to every session and 401 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-31.

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