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.
npx agentmods add skills/lexler/skill-factory/alignnpx skills add lexler/skill-factory --skill aligngit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lexler/skill-factoryWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00033 | $0.00726 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00016 | $0.00363 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00007 | $0.00145 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00073 |
Grade A, and why
align 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 3d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 74 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
STARTER_CHARACTER = 🎯
Goal
Synchronize the mental model between you and the user before implementation begins. Discrepancies found during implementation are expensive — find them now while changes are free. Your job is to make your thinking visible so the user can spot where your understanding diverges from theirs.
Core Principle
Propose, don't ask. Think first, then present your thinking for confirmation. The user's job is to spot divergence and course-correct, not to generate the approach.
Flow — Zoom In
Each level deepens understanding. Confirm before going deeper.
Goal → Big Picture → Straightforward Details → Non-obvious Decisions (one by one)
1. Goal
State what you understand the goal to be and why it matters. A sentence or two. This catches the deepest misalignment — if you're solving the wrong problem, nothing else matters.
Confirm with AskUserQuestion before going deeper.
2. Big Picture
Present the overall shape of the approach: how do the pieces relate, what's the high-level flow. ASCII diagram. A few sentences, not a page.
Confirm with AskUserQuestion before going deeper.
3. Straightforward Details
Decisions where there's really only one reasonable approach. No ⭐/❌ needed since there are no real alternatives. The user confirms or flags exceptions.
Group items by topic. Anchor each group with an ASCII diagram — not just for file structures, but for any group: roles and their responsibilities, control flow, communication between components. The diagram is what makes a group scannable. Present one group at a time, confirm, move to the next group.
Each item: one line stating the decision. Save the "why" — it's obvious.
4. Non-obvious Decisions
Decisions with real tradeoffs, multiple valid approaches, or where your recommendation might surprise the user.
First, present a brief index of what's coming — just the problem titles, no recommendations. This lets the user see the scope.
Then walk through each one (or small related groups) with:
- The problem: what is being decided, why it matters
- ⭐ Recommended approach with rationale
- ❌ Alternatives considered with why they were rejected
- ASCII diagram if the item involves structure or flow
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.
- 3d ago First seen · 74 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A 789a4a30ac30
align is a skill published in the GitHub repository lexler/skill-factory (231 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 726 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
systematic-debugging
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.
brainstorming
You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.
auto-perf-optimize
Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.
chat-perf
Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.
chat-pet-sprite-creation
Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.
cpu-profile-analysis
Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…