classic-template-hierarchy

classic-template-hierarchy is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills. It costs 124 tokens per session (2,399 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to WordPress's template hierarchy: the rules WordPress uses to choose which PHP file displays each kind of page.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose or create page, post, archive, taxonomy, search, 404, attachment, and custom templates, and to review child-theme overrides.
Why use it?
It helps explain why the wrong template loads and prevents confusion between the front page, blog page, archives, searches, and error pages.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to choose or create page, post, archive, taxonomy, search, 404, attachment, and custom templates, and to review child-theme overrides.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills/classic-template-hierarchy
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 Lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills --skill classic-template-hierarchy
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Lonsdale201/wp-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 classic-template-hierarchy

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills/classic-template-hierarchy/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills/classic-template-hierarchy)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills/classic-template-hierarchy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills/classic-template-hierarchy/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 classic-template-hierarchy

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills/classic-template-hierarchy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills/classic-template-hierarchy.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 124 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,399 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00124 $0.02399
Opus 5 $0.00062 $0.01200
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00480
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00240

Measured yesterday against content hash c406bb20bc57, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

classic-template-hierarchy 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 yesterday.

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.

theme-development/classic-template-hierarchy/SKILL.md · 248 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 248 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Classic Template Hierarchy

Use this when deciding which PHP template file a classic theme should contain, or when auditing why WordPress loads the wrong template.

This is a classic PHP theme skill. Do not apply FSE/block-template assumptions such as templates/page.html.

When to Use This Skill

  • Adding page.php, single.php, archive.php, 404.php, or similar template files.
  • Debugging front page vs blog index behavior.
  • Converting static pages into WordPress templates.
  • Creating custom page templates.
  • Reviewing template_include, template_redirect, get_template_part, or child-theme override behavior.

Loader Model in WP 7.1

wp-includes/template-loader.php checks query conditionals, asks a get_*_template() function for candidates, then falls back to index.php.

Important WP 7.1 details:

  • The final path passes through template_include.
  • WordPress resolves the returned template through realpath().
  • The final included template must be a readable .php or .html file.
  • wp_before_include_template fires immediately before inclusion.

Do not include a template and call exit from template_redirect. Core's own docblock says template loading should be changed via template_include so later hooks still run.

WordPress 7.1 adds WP_Query::$is_sitemap, WP_Query::is_sitemap(), and the global is_sitemap() conditional for requests with the sitemap query var. Like other conditional tags, call it only after the main query is parsed. It does not add a sitemap.php theme hierarchy entry. Core or an SEO plugin normally handles sitemap output during routing/hooks; do not render an XML sitemap through an HTML theme template merely because the conditional exists.

Child Theme Lookup

locate_template() searches:

  1. Active stylesheet directory, usually child theme.
  2. Parent template directory, when a child theme is active.
  3. wp-includes/theme-compat/ fallback for a few legacy files.

This means a child theme can override a parent template by adding the same relative file path.

Read the full file on GitHub · 248 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. yesterday Changed · -1 lines c406bb20bc57
  2. 9d ago First seen · 249 lines · 124 tokens per session scan A 61fc176787c4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

classic-template-hierarchy is a skill published in the GitHub repository Lonsdale201/wp-agent-skills (22 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 124 tokens to every session and 2,399 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-09-03.

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