having-difficult-conversations

having-difficult-conversations is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus. It costs 22 tokens per session (2,205 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A preparation guide for difficult workplace conversations about performance, behaviour, expectations, decisions, or job loss. It produces a conversation plan, possible responses, and a follow-up note.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare feedback, explain a denied promotion, handle a layoff or termination with HR involved, or document what was agreed after a hard conversation.
Why use it?
It helps you be direct while preserving the other person’s dignity. It turns vague concerns into specific examples and clear next steps.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to prepare feedback, explain a denied promotion, handle a layoff or termination with HR involved, or document what was agreed after a hard conversation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/having-difficult-conversations
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 liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus --skill having-difficult-conversations
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus

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 having-difficult-conversations

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/having-difficult-conversations/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/having-difficult-conversations)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/having-difficult-conversations"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/having-difficult-conversations/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 having-difficult-conversations

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/having-difficult-conversations"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/having-difficult-conversations.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,205 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 $0.00022 $0.02205
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.01103
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00441
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00220

Measured 11d ago against content hash 21fae2cc0e64, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

having-difficult-conversations 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 11d 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.

skills/having-difficult-conversations/SKILL.md · 136 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 136 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Having Difficult Conversations

Scope

Covers

  • Planning and delivering clear, respectful, direct conversations about performance, behavior, expectations, and decisions
  • Turning “insight about feedback” into concrete artifacts: brief → talk track → reactions plan → follow-up
  • Using Radical Candor as a default stance: care personally + challenge directly
  • Preserving dignity in high-stakes moments (especially layoffs/terminations): private, human, and unambiguous
  • Separating feelings from attributions so feedback stays specific and actionable

When to use

  • “Help me prepare a difficult conversation with my direct report / peer.”
  • “Write a talk track for performance feedback (with specific examples).”
  • “I need to deny a promotion—help me be direct and still leave hope + a path.”
  • “Prepare a layoff/termination conversation talk track (I have HR involved).”
  • “Draft a follow-up message after a hard conversation that documents next steps.”

When NOT to use

  • You need to decide whether to promote/terminate (use your company’s performance process; involve HR/leadership)
  • You’re handling harassment, discrimination, threats, or an investigation (stop and follow HR/legal policy)
  • You need legal advice, severance guidance, or policy interpretation (involve HR/legal)
  • The situation is a mental health or safety crisis (seek professional help and follow company policy)
  • You want an ongoing coaching and 1:1 system for your reports (use running-effective-1-1s)
  • You want to develop PM skills through coaching, not deliver specific feedback (use coaching-pms)
  • You need to set expectations or push back upward with your manager (use managing-up)
  • You want to run a blameless retrospective after an incident or failure (use post-mortems-retrospectives)

Inputs

Minimum required

  • Conversation type (feedback, performance, promotion denial, layoff/termination) + relationship (manager/report/peer)
  • Desired outcome (what should be true immediately after + in 2–4 weeks)
  • 2–5 concrete examples/facts (what happened, when, impact) + expectations/standards
  • Constraints: timeline/urgency, location (in-person/video), HR/legal involvement (if applicable)
  • Any support you can offer (coaching, resources, training, timeline, check-ins)

Read the full file on GitHub · 136 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. 11d ago First seen · 136 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 21fae2cc0e64

Subscribe to this mod's changes

having-difficult-conversations is a skill published in the GitHub repository liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus (52 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 2,205 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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