Paperthin is a collection of low-level design patterns that coding agents can apply as repeatable checks and actions during software work. It is for people using agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or other supported tools, and its catalogue entries package the patterns as skills, an instruction, and a plugin.
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 skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill catchupgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/LilMGenius/paperthinWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/catchup)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/catchup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/catchup/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/catchup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/catchup.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Socket pass
- Snyk pass
- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00084 | $0.00716 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00034 | $0.00286 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00017 | $0.00143 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00072 |
Grade A, and why
catchup 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 1mo 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.
Copies of this mod
1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:
- catchup — 100% identical
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 53 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Catch the human up at their eye level, from state, not from memory.
Goal
catchup is the re-entry point for a lost human. Long agent cycles coin words, rename files, run
experiments, and make calls faster than the owner can follow. Before any next action makes sense,
the owner's mental model must be reloaded. catchup reads the live project state and returns a
briefing a person with zero retained context can act on. It runs before the next move gets decided:
catchup restores the map, so that decision starts from truth instead of a stale memory of it.
Workflow
- Read live state only: recent file mtimes, git log/diffs, plan and state docs, re0-memo notes, task boards. Never brief from conversation memory alone — memory is what drifted.
- Anchor on the human's last touch (their last message, judgment, or commit). Everything after that point is the delta; everything before it is assumed known and stays out.
- Compose in decision order, not chronological order:
- Needs you — decisions, judgments, or inputs only the human can give, each self-contained enough to act on without opening another file.
- Changed while you were away — outcomes, not process. "The plan's scoring rule was replaced" beats "I ran three analysis passes."
- New words — every term coined or repurposed since their last touch, one line each, with where it lives. Skip terms they already used themselves.
- Gloss on first use: any project-specific term appearing in the briefing gets an inline plain-language aside at its first occurrence, even if a glossary section follows.
- Keep the default short (a screen or less). End with drill-down offers per section, not with everything expanded.
Rules
- State-grounded: every claim traces to a file, commit, or artifact the human can open. No "as we discussed."
- Read-only on the project.
catchupbriefs; it does not fix, rename, or decide. - The ask comes first. A briefing that buries the one question needing the human is a log.
- Outcome voice, not journey voice. Narrating the agent's process is self-report, not briefing.
- Silence the settled: closed decisions and healthy metrics get one line or none.
- Honest completeness: "done" means verified done; "moved" is not "reconciled"; say which.
- Do not re-explain terms the human demonstrably knows (they used them first).
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 53 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A d5b265bfbb21
catchup is a skill published in the GitHub repository LilMGenius/paperthin (1,162 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 716 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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
mm-handoff
A skill that creates a compact handoff.md summary for starting a new Claude chat when the current chat is full. The file records recent work, current status, open questions, and selected project context.
mm-save-session
An end-of-session recorder for Claude Code that saves the conversation summary and project state in Obsidian notes. Obsidian is a note-taking app that stores information as files.
mm-clear-gate
A read-only checkpoint that uses a script to check whether project notes, handoff files, repository changes, and session records have been saved before clearing context.
mm-setup
A setup guide that personalizes a shared mm system for one user. It asks for details such as your name, work area, tools, language, and Obsidian vault location, then saves them in private configuration files.
mm-vault
A setup tool that creates a private GitHub repository for an Obsidian project memory folder and connects it to Claude.ai project knowledge. Obsidian is a note-taking app that stores information as files.
mm-doctor
A diagnostic workflow for checking the health of the mm system, including its configuration, project links, note vault, passports, session archive, and planning consistency.