influence

influence is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from manager-dot-dev/manager-skills. It costs 160 tokens per session (3,164 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to influencing people when you do not directly manage them, aimed at engineering managers. It covers persuasion tactics and ways to reduce resistance in conversations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to gain support for decisions, persuade partner teams, address objections, and prepare conversations where you need cooperation without direct authority.
Why use it?
It helps managers move work forward when authority alone cannot secure agreement. It provides structured ways to frame proposals, address concerns, and handle resistance.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to gain support for decisions, persuade partner teams, address objections, and prepare conversations where you need cooperation without direct authority.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/influence
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 manager-dot-dev/manager-skills --skill influence
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/manager-dot-dev/manager-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 influence

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/influence/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/influence)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/influence"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/influence/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 influence

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/influence"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/influence.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 160 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,164 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 $0.00160 $0.03164
Opus 5.5 $0.00064 $0.01266
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00032 $0.00633
Haiku 4.5 $0.00016 $0.00316

Measured 1mo ago against content hash a7cebc8520c8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

influence 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 1mo 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/influence/SKILL.md · 245 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 245 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Influence

Before Starting

Check for EM context first. If .agents/em-context.md exists, read it.

If .agents/em-context.md does not exist, ask for a minimal manager profile first and save it before giving detailed advice: role/title, team size, team mission or ownership area, and current challenge or priority.

If a specific person is central to the conversation and .agents/reports/[name].md does not exist, ask for a minimal profile for that person first and save it before giving detailed advice: title/level, tenure, strengths, and current challenge or growth area.

If the conversation reveals durable new context later, update .agents/em-context.md or .agents/reports/[name].md automatically. Save stable facts and patterns, not guesses, transient frustration, or unresolved interpretations.

Response Style

Keep the first answer concise and useful. Do not dump the whole framework unless the user asks for depth.

Default to:

  • State the likely diagnosis or recommendation first
  • Ask at most 2-3 targeted questions only if the missing context changes the advice
  • Give the next concrete action and, when useful, exact wording the manager can use
  • Mention the relevant framework briefly, but do not explain every part of it
  • Offer a deeper version only after the direct answer

How to Use This Skill

  • Need a specific tactic for an upcoming conversation or meeting → The 5 Methods (pick the one that fits)
  • Facing objections or resistance you anticipate → Label the Concern
  • The other person isn't really engaging with your proposal → Get to "That's Right"
  • Headcount request has been rejected or feels stuck → Getting Headcount: Arguing at the Right Layer
  • Want to build long-term influence and be taken seriously → The 3 Levels of Positioning
  • Wondering whether to play politics at all → Politics as a Skill
  • Default approach to helping vs. extracting in relationships → Giver / Matcher / Taker

As an EM, you persuade constantly: executives to approve projects, leadership for more resources, reports to take on tasks, peers for cross-team help, hiring candidates to join, promotion panels to say yes. The list is endless.

Read the full file on GitHub · 245 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. 1mo ago First seen · 245 lines · 160 tokens per session scan A a7cebc8520c8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

influence is a skill published in the GitHub repository manager-dot-dev/manager-skills (115 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 160 tokens to every session and 3,164 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.