shaping

A method for turning an unclear idea into a concrete requirement, design, decision, or small set of distinct options. It narrows the possibilities by resolving the gaps that prevent action.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to clarify requirements, scope a feature, compare technical approaches, decide whether something is worth building, brainstorm ideas, or choose a name.
Why use it?
It helps when a request is too vague to build or when an important product or technical choice has not been made. It avoids unnecessary questioning when the task is already specific.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/liustack/vibemaster/shaping
Any agent
npx skills add liustack/vibemaster --skill shaping
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/liustack/vibemaster

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 206 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,795 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00206 $0.01795
Opus 5 $0.00103 $0.00898
Sonnet 5 $0.00041 $0.00359
Haiku 4.5 $0.00021 $0.00179

Measured 2d ago against content hash 3eda633d459f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

shaping 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 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/check-publish.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/shaping/SKILL.md · 78 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 78 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

shaping: from unformed intent to something actionable

Shaping converges an unformed intent into something the user can act on: a requirement spec, a solution design, a set of genuinely different candidates, a grounded call. The method is exclusion. Each round rules out part of what the deliverable could be, until what remains is small enough to act on.

Pay per gap, not per pipeline. Divergence and grilling are operators called when their gap blocks, never stages every request walks through.

When not to run

A request that already points at one thing (execute an existing spec, answer a question, deliver settled content) leaves nothing to exclude. Complete the original request directly. Zero questions, zero files, no mention of this skill. Life and career decisions are not this skill's work either. When it cannot be told whether this applies, it does not. A later message with a stronger signal can still enter.

A mixed request exempts only its execution items, never its question. When a request bundles build items with an undecided question whose answer changes what gets built, converge that question first (usually entering directly at 2→3), deliver the call with grounds, then continue the execution items. A majority of execution items is not a reason to skip the question.

A candidate the user brings is a candidate, not a decision. "Maybe just X" enters 2→3 to be judged alongside the alternatives. It does not close the gate.

Three working rules

  1. Output that excludes nothing is not progress. A pile of candidates excludes nothing. Same-family rewordings exclude nothing. A question whose answer would not change the deliverable excludes nothing.
  2. Every exclusion carries its grounds, and what new evidence would reopen it. When grounds are missing, do not fake a recommendation. Recommend the smallest action that buys the evidence.
  3. Any exclusion can be reopened by new evidence, and reopening beats refining. When the frame is wrong, stop decorating inside it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 78 lines

Files

What ships with it

8 files 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. 2d ago First seen · 78 lines · 206 tokens per session scan A 3eda633d459f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

shaping is a skill published in the GitHub repository liustack/vibemaster (10 stars, last pushed 19d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 206 tokens to every session and 1,795 once invoked, about $0.0010 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 2026-08-31.

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