agent-authoring

agent-authoring is a skill for Claude Code from majiayu000/claude-skill-registry. It costs 38 tokens per session (3,339 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for creating specialized AI agents. It covers their focus, model choice, tool access, permissions, and isolated working context.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design, update, and improve agents, decide when an agent is suitable, and choose their tools and configuration.
Why use it?
It helps turn a broad request into an agent with a clear role and appropriate limits.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; names the AskUserQuestion tool; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit Use it to design, update, and improve agents, decide when an agent is suitable, and choose their tools and configuration.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/agent-authoring
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 majiayu000/claude-skill-registry --skill agent-authoring
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry

Made for: Claude Code.

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 agent-authoring

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/agent-authoring/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/agent-authoring)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/agent-authoring"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/agent-authoring/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 agent-authoring

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/agent-authoring"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/agent-authoring.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,339 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 warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 4 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Excessive Agency · line 161
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 299
    Code scans file system directories looking for sensitive files. This could be reconnaissance for credential theft.
    Fix: Remove unnecessary filesystem scanning. If file access is needed, use explicit, scoped paths. Avoid reading ~/.ssh, ~/.aws, or credential directories.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 323
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 479
    Skill grants unrestricted tool access without appropriate constraints. An agent with unfettered tool access can perform arbitrary actions including file modification, network requests, and code execution.
    Fix: Restrict tool access to only the tools required for the skill's stated purpose. Use an explicit allowlist rather than granting blanket access.
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 $0.00038 $0.03339
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.01670
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00668
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00334

Measured 9d ago against content hash ef96e72d629d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

agent-authoring 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 9d 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/agent/agent-authoring/SKILL.md · 546 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 546 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Reference Files

Advanced agent authoring guidance:


About Agents

Agents are specialized AI assistants that run in separate subprocesses with focused expertise. They have:

  • Specific focus areas - Clearly defined areas of expertise
  • Model choice - Sonnet, Opus, or Haiku depending on complexity
  • Tool restrictions - Limited to only the tools they need
  • Permission modes - Control over how they interact with the system
  • Isolated context - Run separately from the main conversation

When to use agents:

  • Task requires specialized expertise
  • Need different model than main conversation
  • Want to restrict tools for security/focus
  • Task benefits from isolated context
  • Can be invoked automatically or manually

Core Principles

1. Clear Focus Areas

Focus areas define what the agent is expert in. They should be:

Specific, not generic:

  • ❌ "Python programming"
  • ✅ "FastAPI REST APIs with SQLAlchemy ORM and pytest testing"

Concrete, with examples:

  • ❌ "Best practices"
  • ✅ "Defensive programming with strict error handling"

5-15 focus areas that cover the agent's expertise comprehensively.

Example from evaluator agent:

## Focus Areas

- YAML Frontmatter Validation
- Markdown Structure
- Tool Permissions
- Description Quality
- File Organization
- Progressive Disclosure
- Integration Patterns

2. Model Selection (Keep It Simple)

Sonnet (default choice for most agents):

  • Balanced cost and capability
  • Handles most programming tasks
  • Good for analysis and code generation
  • Use unless you have a specific reason not to

Haiku (for simple, fast tasks):

Read the full file on GitHub · 546 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 9d ago First seen · 546 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A ef96e72d629d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

agent-authoring is a skill published in the GitHub repository majiayu000/claude-skill-registry (606 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 3,339 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.