coding-tools

A guide for delegating coding tasks to Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor through command-line tools. It covers both running a coding tool and applying its changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Implementing, debugging, refactoring, exploring, and committing changes across one or more code files.
Why use it?
It helps choose an external coding assistant for substantial repository work and explains how to check whether each tool is installed.

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/markus-global/markus/coding-tools
Any agent
npx skills add markus-global/markus --skill coding-tools
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/markus-global/markus

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 34 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,023 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 $0.00034 $0.03023
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.01511
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00605
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00302

Measured 2d ago against content hash 7b3e92963b98, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

coding-tools 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.

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.

templates/skills/coding-tools/SKILL.md · 301 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 301 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Coding Tools

Markus can delegate hands-on coding work to external CLI tools. You have two built-in tools for this workflow:

Tool Purpose
invoke_coding_tool Run Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor Agent against a repository with a prompt
coding_tool_apply Commit the changes produced by a coding tool session

Use these when the task requires substantial code changes across multiple files, when you want a specialized coding agent to explore a codebase, or when direct editing would be slower or less reliable than delegating to a dedicated tool.

Available Coding Tools

Tool name CLI binary Best for
claude-code claude Complex refactors, multi-file changes, deep exploration, architecture-level edits
codex codex Quick fixes, targeted patches, scripted automation, fast iteration
cursor-agent cursor IDE-heavy work, projects with .cursor/rules, repo-specific conventions

Check availability with markus doctor before relying on a tool. If a tool is not installed, the handler returns an installHint.

When to Use External Tools vs Write Code Directly

Use external coding tools when:

  • The change spans many files or requires broad codebase exploration
  • You need an autonomous agent to iterate (edit → test → fix) inside the repo
  • The task is well-scoped with clear acceptance criteria but large implementation surface
  • You are coordinating work and want a specialist tool to execute while you review results

Write code directly (file_edit, shell_execute) when:

  • The change is small — a few lines in one or two files
  • You already know exactly what to change and where
  • You need fine-grained control over every edit
  • The task is configuration, documentation, or non-code work

Rule of thumb: If you would open an IDE and spend 15+ minutes navigating and editing, prefer invoke_coding_tool. If you can describe the exact diff in one paragraph, edit directly.

How to Invoke a Coding Tool

Read the full file on GitHub · 301 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. 2d ago First seen · 301 lines · 34 tokens per session scan A 7b3e92963b98

Subscribe to this mod's changes

coding-tools is a skill published in the GitHub repository markus-global/markus (157 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 3,023 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 2026-08-30.