write-a-skill

write-a-skill is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from kevinnft/ai-agent-skills. It costs 35 tokens per session (706 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of write-a-skill, MIT.

Instructions for creating new skills for AI agents, including their structure, instructions, references, and utility scripts.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for gathering requirements, drafting a SKILL.md file, adding supporting resources, and reviewing the result with the user.
Why use it?
It provides a repeatable way to turn a task or domain into an organized skill that an agent can follow.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit It is for gathering requirements, drafting a SKILL.md file, adding supporting resources, and reviewing the result with the user.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills/write-a-skill
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 kevinnft/ai-agent-skills --skill write-a-skill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills

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 write-a-skill

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills/write-a-skill/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills/write-a-skill)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills/write-a-skill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills/write-a-skill/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 write-a-skill

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills/write-a-skill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kevinnft/ai-agent-skills/write-a-skill.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 706 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 91% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00035 $0.00706
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00353
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00141
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00071

Measured 9d ago against content hash 6812476cab30, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

write-a-skill 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.

Origin

This is a copy

91% identical to write-a-skill — 5 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/mattpocock/productivity/write-a-skill/SKILL.md · 123 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 123 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing Skills

Process

  1. Gather requirements - ask user about:

    • What task/domain does the skill cover?
    • What specific use cases should it handle?
    • Does it need executable scripts or just instructions?
    • Any reference materials to include?
  2. Draft the skill - create:

    • SKILL.md with concise instructions
    • Additional reference files if content exceeds 500 lines
    • Utility scripts if deterministic operations needed
  3. Review with user - present draft and ask:

    • Does this cover your use cases?
    • Anything missing or unclear?
    • Should any section be more/less detailed?

Skill Structure

skill-name/
├── SKILL.md           # Main instructions (required)
├── REFERENCE.md       # Detailed docs (if needed)
├── EXAMPLES.md        # Usage examples (if needed)
└── scripts/           # Utility scripts (if needed)
    └── helper.js

SKILL.md Template

---
name: skill-name
description: Brief description of capability. Use when [specific triggers].
---

# Skill Name

## Quick start

[Minimal working example]

## Workflows

[Step-by-step processes with checklists for complex tasks]

## Advanced features

[Link to separate files: See [REFERENCE.md](REFERENCE.md)]

Description Requirements

The description is the only thing your agent sees when deciding which skill to load. It's surfaced in the system prompt alongside all other installed skills. Your agent reads these descriptions and picks the relevant skill based on the user's request.

Goal: Give your agent just enough info to know:

  1. What capability this skill provides
  2. When/why to trigger it (specific keywords, contexts, file types)

Format:

  • Max 1024 chars
  • Write in third person
  • First sentence: what it does
  • Second sentence: "Use when [specific triggers]"

Good example:

Extract text and tables from PDF files, fill forms, merge documents. Use when working with PDF files or when user mentions PDFs, forms, or document extraction.

Read the full file on GitHub · 123 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. 9d ago First seen · 123 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A 6812476cab30

Subscribe to this mod's changes

write-a-skill is a skill published in the GitHub repository kevinnft/ai-agent-skills (14 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 706 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 91% identical to write-a-skill, differing in 5 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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