improve

A code-improvement skill that scans an existing codebase for design friction and possible improvements. It can present findings as an HTML report and explore different interface designs for a selected issue.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to examine module design, testability, and how easily people or coding agents can navigate the code, then develop and compare improvement options.
Why use it?
It helps you find improvement opportunities proactively instead of only reviewing changes after they are made.

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/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/improve
Any agent
npx skills add melodic-software/claude-code-plugins --skill improve
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 233 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,760 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 $0.00233 $0.01760
Opus 5 $0.00117 $0.00880
Sonnet 5 $0.00047 $0.00352
Haiku 4.5 $0.00023 $0.00176

Measured 2d ago against content hash d852b54a3c9d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

improve 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.

plugins/architecture/skills/improve/SKILL.md · 83 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 83 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Pre-computed context

Current branch: !git branch --show-current 2>/dev/null || echo "unknown" Recent commits: !git log --oneline -20 2>/dev/null || echo "no commits" Working tree status (empty = clean): !{ git status --porcelain 2>/dev/null || echo "(git status unavailable)"; } | head -10

Variables

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Purpose

Improvement is distinct from review and planning. Review evaluates a DIFF against criteria (reactive). Planning designs NEW work (forward-looking). This skill scans EXISTING code for friction and proposes candidates for improvement (proactive).

The scan-present-pick process generalizes across improvement lenses. Each lens (action) brings its own analysis method and vocabulary via an actions/<lens>.md playbook plus a research/<lens>/ reference set, loaded only when that lens runs. The first lens, deepening, implements Ousterhout's deep-module concept: finding shallow modules (interface nearly as complex as implementation) and proposing how to deepen them. The aim is testability and AI/agent-navigability (AX): a deep module's small interface lets a reader, human or agent, grasp its purpose without traversing the whole import graph.

This finds existing friction. It does not plan new work, apply mechanical code-level tidyings, enforce rules on a diff, or review changes before a PR. Those are separate concerns handled by planning, tidying, rule-enforcement, and review tools respectively (see "Composition").

Actions

Argument Action What it does
(empty) Defaults to deepening Runs the deepening lens
deepening Deepening (Ousterhout) Shallow→deep module scan → HTML report → interview loop (with a Design-It-Twice branch for parallel interface exploration) → hand off an agreed candidate for planning. Full process: actions/deepening.md

One lens per invocation. Lenses don't chain implicitly. Read the action's playbook for its full process.

Read the full file on GitHub · 83 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 files 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 · 83 lines · 233 tokens per session scan A d852b54a3c9d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

improve is a skill published in the GitHub repository melodic-software/claude-code-plugins (12 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 233 tokens to every session and 1,760 once invoked, about $0.0012 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.

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