pick-a-lane

pick-a-lane is a skill for Claude Code from kalyvask/winning-writing. It costs 150 tokens per session (2,156 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing review that chooses one main story from a draft containing several partial stories. It removes whole side stories so the strongest narrative can be told clearly.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to revise biographies, personal statements, cold emails, and other short writing that jumps between several experiences.
Why use it?
Mentioning many achievements briefly can make all of them forgettable. Focusing on one story gives the reader enough detail to understand why it matters.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the winning-writing plugin — 32 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to revise biographies, personal statements, cold emails, and other short writing that jumps between several experiences.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/pick-a-lane
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 kalyvask/winning-writing --skill pick-a-lane
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kalyvask/winning-writing

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install winning-writing, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills.

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 pick-a-lane

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/pick-a-lane/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/pick-a-lane)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/pick-a-lane"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/pick-a-lane/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 pick-a-lane

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/pick-a-lane"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/pick-a-lane.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 150 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,156 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 pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00150 $0.02156
Opus 5 $0.00075 $0.01078
Sonnet 5 $0.00030 $0.00431
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00216

Measured 12d ago against content hash f19fc7626f89, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pick-a-lane 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 12d 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.

side-panel-coach/rules/skills/pick-a-lane/SKILL.md · 165 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 165 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Pick a lane

Source: Konrad's rule 7 from Winning Writing, Adam Bryant's Corner Office column (NYT) on what CEOs look for in candidates, and a before/after rewrite pattern taught in Kramon's class.

The premise

Most personal writing fails not because the writer lacks material but because the writer has too much of it and won't choose. Five accomplishments mentioned in 200 words means each one gets 40 words. None lands.

Pick a lane. Tell one story in full. Trust that the reader who wants the rest can find your LinkedIn.

"Pick a lane, and stay in it. Don't stray all over the highway by regurgitating your resume. Stay on that story and tell it right." — Adam Bryant (via Glenn Kramon's class)

This is distinct from compression. Compression cuts adverbs and throat-clearing. Pick-a-lane cuts whole biographical episodes. They run different surgeries.

What "all over the highway" looks like

Three failure shapes. All three can fit in one paragraph.

1. The career-arc dump

"I started in management consulting, then went to a Series B startup, then moved to private equity, then co-founded a company, then came to GSB."

Five jobs in one sentence. The reader learns nothing about any of them. This is what your LinkedIn header is for.

2. The skill-collection dump

"I have led teams of 5–50, built ML systems from scratch, raised capital from top-tier VCs, written code in seven languages, and managed P&Ls of $100M+."

Five claims, zero evidence for any of them. Reads as bragging because each line is a label without proof.

3. The story-soup

"In high school I won the state debate championship. In college I founded a tutoring nonprofit. At my first job I led a $50M product launch. At my second job I rebuilt the data platform. At Stanford I'm exploring AI agents and writing a Substack."

Five stories, each two sentences. None of them is told. The reader doesn't know what you actually did or why it mattered.

What "stay in your lane" looks like

Read the full file on GitHub · 165 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. 12d ago First seen · 165 lines · 150 tokens per session scan A f19fc7626f89

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pick-a-lane is a skill published in the GitHub repository kalyvask/winning-writing (13 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 150 tokens to every session and 2,156 once invoked, about $0.0007 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 2026-08-30.

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