prompt-engineering

prompt-engineering is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill. It costs 215 tokens per session (8,286 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of guidelines for writing, reviewing, and improving instructions given to large language models, the systems behind tools such as chatbots and coding agents.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to draft prompts, system instructions, prompt templates, and agent rules, or to investigate why a prompt gives weak or inconsistent answers.
Why use it?
It helps make model instructions clearer and more consistent, and encourages testing them against actual results instead of relying on wording tricks.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to draft prompts, system instructions, prompt templates, and agent rules, or to investigate why a prompt gives weak or inconsistent answers.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill/prompt-engineering
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 k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill --skill prompt-engineering
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill

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 prompt-engineering

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill/prompt-engineering/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill/prompt-engineering)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill/prompt-engineering"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill/prompt-engineering/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 prompt-engineering

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill/prompt-engineering"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill/prompt-engineering.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 215 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 8,286 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 $0.00215 $0.08286
Opus 5 $0.00108 $0.04143
Sonnet 5 $0.00043 $0.01657
Haiku 4.5 $0.00021 $0.00829

Measured 8d ago against content hash 6c7674bcd31a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prompt-engineering 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 8d 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.

prompt-engineering/SKILL.md · 277 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 277 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Professional Prompt Engineering

Three standing rules:

  1. Specify precisely, delimit unambiguously, keep patterns consistent. Phrasing tricks do not matter; these do.
  2. Match technique to task type and target model. Never apply a technique by habit.
  3. Treat every technique here as a hypothesis to validate on the target task. Trust an eval over this document.

Application strength. Apply firmly and do not second-guess: few-shot non-transfer, temperature-0 limits, eval-driven iteration. Apply as a strong default and override only on eval evidence: everything in Principle 4 for reasoning models. Apply as a default and drop the moment an eval disagrees: the Anatomy section and Principles 5–8. This skill has never been measured against an eval of its own; its rules are literature- and vendor-derived, so your eval outranks it. The Anatomy section and Principles 5–8 (delimiters, placement, output contracts, agentic reminders, instruction hierarchy) are vendor-reported and unverified: apply them as defaults, drop them when an eval disagrees. Sources live in references/evidence.md; load it only when the user asks for sources or effect sizes. Findings verified August 2026; re-check specifics on models released later.

Before writing: read the request, then profile the task

Assume the user is a non-expert in the domain their prompt targets, until the request shows otherwise. Read their words as intent, not as a spec to preserve. When the request uses domain terms correctly and specifies precisely, match that level and keep their structure. When it does not, supply the expertise they lack.

Build the prompt that serves the inferred goal, not the one they literally wrote. Add what they omitted (domain concepts, constraints, terminology, output contract, edge-case handling), cut what works against the goal, and restructure freely. Every change must serve the inferred intent, not your preference.

Resolve ambiguity by choosing, not interrogating. Pick the most reasonable reading, build to it, and state the interpretation you chose plus the main alternative in one line. Ask only when an ambiguity is consequential enough that guessing wrong wastes real effort. Never hand a non-expert a checklist of jargon they cannot answer.

Read the full file on GitHub · 277 lines

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. 8d ago First seen · 277 lines · 215 tokens per session scan A 6c7674bcd31a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prompt-engineering is a skill published in the GitHub repository k-vaca/prompt-engineering-skill (4 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 215 tokens to every session and 8,286 once invoked, about $0.0011 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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