ask-for-help

ask-for-help is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from magic3007/dotfiles. It costs 56 tokens per session (308 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow helper for stopping repeated failed attempts and preparing a precise escalation request. It records distinct troubleshooting attempts, their evidence, and the remaining blocker.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a coding task remains blocked after several materially different diagnosis or recovery attempts.
Why use it?
It prevents an agent from endlessly retrying the same idea and gives another person enough context to continue the investigation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions Codex.

Good fit Use it when a coding task remains blocked after several materially different diagnosis or recovery attempts.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/magic3007/dotfiles/ask-for-help
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 magic3007/dotfiles --skill ask-for-help
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/magic3007/dotfiles

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 ask-for-help

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magic3007/dotfiles/ask-for-help.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/magic3007/dotfiles/ask-for-help)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/magic3007/dotfiles/ask-for-help"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magic3007/dotfiles/ask-for-help.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 308 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 $0.00056 $0.00308
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00154
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00062
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00031

Measured 5d ago against content hash a4441d105a36, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-for-help 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 5d 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.

claude/skills/ask-for-help/SKILL.md · 30 lines

What it actually says

Ask for Help

For each unresolved blocker, keep a short attempt ledger. An attempt counts only when it tests a distinct hypothesis or recovery strategy and produces new evidence. Repeating a command, changing superficial arguments, or retrying a transient failure without new reasoning does not increment the count.

After the fifth materially different failed attempt on the same blocker:

  1. Stop further retries and stop making changes for that blocker.
  2. Preserve the current workspace and do not conceal or revert partial work.
  3. End the current turn with a Codex help request containing:
    • objective and observable done condition;
    • working directory and relevant files;
    • current workspace state and edits already made;
    • the five attempts, each with hypothesis, action, evidence, and failure;
    • exact decisive error text or failing command;
    • best current diagnosis and remaining uncertainty;
    • the smallest recommended next investigation.
  4. Explicitly say that five distinct attempts failed and ask the user to hand the request to Codex. Do not claim that Codex was contacted automatically.

If continuing would require new permission or a user choice, stop immediately for that reason instead of manufacturing five attempts.

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. 5d ago First seen · 30 lines · 56 tokens per session scan A a4441d105a36

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-for-help is a skill published in the GitHub repository magic3007/dotfiles (11 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 308 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

dotfiles

Chezmoi dotfiles conventions and patterns. Use when modifying dotfiles, adding new managed files, working with chezmoi templates, or syncing agent skills and subagents through agentspec.

urmzd/dotfiles · 41 tokens

use-notion

Reference for using the Notion API via the notion-agent subagent. Use to expore and update Notion workspace content.

ooloth/dotfiles · 29 tokens

orchestrate-agents

Orchestrate multiple agent CLIs (Claude, Codex, Antigravity) via tmux with a shared fleet store, dispatching one guardian subagent per pane. Survey-first: inspects and adopts existing tmux sessions, windows, and agent panes before creating anything new. Use when running a multi-agent session, dispatching parallel…

urmzd/dotfiles · 83 tokens

assess-quality

Foundational quality framework: the five questions (readable, easy to start, expands without bloat, consistent, intentional) every other dev skill is judged against, plus the dual-audience and workshop principles. Use when onboarding to a project, defining a quality bar, setting an assessment checklist, or arbitrating…

urmzd/dotfiles · 120 tokens

create-oss-skill

Create well-formed Agent Skills following the agentskills.io specification. Scaffold directories, write SKILL.md files, bundle scripts, and structure instructions for progressive disclosure. Use when creating a new skill, reviewing skill structure, optimizing a skill description, or setting up evals for skill quality.

urmzd/dotfiles · 63 tokens

extend-oss-skills-to-claude

Extend standard agentskills.io skills with Claude Code-specific features. Invocation control, subagent execution, dynamic context injection, string substitutions, model/effort overrides, and deployment scoping. Use when adapting a portable skill for Claude Code, adding Claude-specific frontmatter, setting up subagent…

urmzd/dotfiles · 74 tokens