walking-skeleton

walking-skeleton is a skill for Claude Code from me2resh/apexyard. It costs 47 tokens per session (4,033 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for creating the smallest real version of a feature or service across all system layers, from user interface through deployment and back. Unlike a throwaway experiment, the result is kept and expanded into the finished product.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create and deploy a thin working path through the UI, API, application logic, storage, and deployment layers.
Why use it?
It proves early that the architecture works end to end, before a team invests in full feature logic.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Good fit Use it to create and deploy a thin working path through the UI, API, application logic, storage, and deployment layers.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/me2resh/apexyard/walking-skeleton
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 me2resh/apexyard --skill walking-skeleton
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/me2resh/apexyard

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 walking-skeleton

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/me2resh/apexyard/walking-skeleton/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/me2resh/apexyard/walking-skeleton)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/me2resh/apexyard/walking-skeleton"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/me2resh/apexyard/walking-skeleton/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 walking-skeleton

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/me2resh/apexyard/walking-skeleton"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/me2resh/apexyard/walking-skeleton.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,033 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 high

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 →

  • high Rogue Agent · line 46
    Skill modifies its own code, configuration, or behavior at runtime. Self-modification enables an agent to escalate privileges, disable safety constraints, or install persistent backdoors.
    Fix: Prevent the skill from modifying its own code, SKILL.md, or configuration files. Treat skill files as read-only at runtime.
  • high Tool Misuse · line 67
    Tool parameters are crafted to achieve unintended or unsafe behavior. Parameter abuse can bypass intended safety checks (e.g. shell=True, --force, dangerous glob patterns).
    Fix: Validate all tool parameters against an allowlist. Reject dangerous parameter values (shell=True, --force, -rf /) and use safe defaults.
  • medium Agent Snooping · line 348
    Skill enumerates or reads other installed skills. Access to other skills' SKILL.md files or the skills directory reveals prompt instructions, capabilities, and secrets that should be invisible to peer skills.
    Fix: Remove all code or instructions that list or read other skills' files or directories. Skills should operate independently; cross-skill access is a privilege escalation.
  • medium Agent Snooping · line 348
    Skill enumerates or reads other installed skills. Access to other skills' SKILL.md files or the skills directory reveals prompt instructions, capabilities, and secrets that should be invisible to peer skills.
    Fix: Remove all code or instructions that list or read other skills' files or directories. Skills should operate independently; cross-skill access is a privilege escalation.
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 $0.00047 $0.04033
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.02017
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00807
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00403

Measured 6d ago against content hash 59411d96facb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

walking-skeleton 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 6d 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/walking-skeleton/SKILL.md · 353 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 353 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/walking-skeleton — Scaffold the Thin End-to-End Slice

Creates a structured GitHub Issue for a walking skeleton — the thinnest possible end-to-end slice of a new feature or service: one trivial happy path wired through every architectural layer (UI → API → domain → store → deploy → back), with no business logic beyond the thinnest happy path. The skeleton actually runs and deploys, so integration and architecture are proven early. You then build the real product on top of it.

The taxonomy — three skills, two axes (throwaway vs kept, technical vs UX).

Skill Question it answers Lifecycle
/spike "Will this technically work?" THROWAWAY — discarded after the answer is in (/spike-close).
/prototype "What should this look and feel like?" THROWAWAY — discarded after the direction is chosen (/prototype-close).
/walking-skeleton "Is the whole architecture wired and deployable end-to-end?" KEPT — the production spine you flesh out. Full SDLC.

The walking skeleton is the opposite of a spike/prototype: minimal but production-shaped and kept. This distinction prevents the common, expensive confusion where a throwaway exploration gets accidentally promoted into production. A walking skeleton is held to the full bar from day one because it stays — it is NOT exempt from the AgDR + coverage gates the way /spike and /prototype are. See workflows/sdlc.md § Phase 1 and .claude/rules/workflow-gates.md.

Path resolution

Read the registry path via portfolio_registry, the per-project docs dir via portfolio_projects_dir, and the ideas backlog via portfolio_ideas_backlog — all from .claude/hooks/_lib-portfolio-paths.sh. Source the helper at the top of any bash block that touches those paths:

source "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.claude/hooks/_lib-read-config.sh"
source "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.claude/hooks/_lib-portfolio-paths.sh"
registry=$(portfolio_registry)

Read the full file on GitHub · 353 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. 6d ago First seen · 353 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A 59411d96facb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

walking-skeleton is a skill published in the GitHub repository me2resh/apexyard (498 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 4,033 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.

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