writing-skills

A test-driven process for creating or updating coding-agent skills, which are instruction guides for agents.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps write pressure tests, observe agents fail without the skill, improve the instructions, and verify them before deployment.
Why use it?
It checks whether a skill changes agent behavior as intended instead of relying on documentation that merely sounds correct.

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/missingpackage/nightshift/writing-skills
Any agent
npx skills add MissingPackage/nightshift --skill writing-skills
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MissingPackage/nightshift

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,891 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 98% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00020 $0.05891
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.02946
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.01178
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00589

Measured yesterday against content hash 5400c0ec59c0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-skills 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 yesterday.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (render-graphs.js), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

98% identical to writing-skills — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/vendored/writing-skills/SKILL.md · 682 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 682 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing Skills

Overview

Writing skills IS Test-Driven Development applied to process documentation.

Personal skills live in your runtime's skills directory (~/.claude/skills/ on Claude Code) — see codex-tools.md or gemini-tools.md for the path on those runtimes. Codex, Copilot CLI, and Gemini CLI all also recognize ~/.agents/skills/ as a cross-runtime alias.

You write test cases (pressure scenarios with subagents), watch them fail (baseline behavior), write the skill (documentation), watch tests pass (agents comply), and refactor (close loopholes).

Core principle: If you didn't watch an agent fail without the skill, you don't know if the skill teaches the right thing.

REQUIRED BACKGROUND: You MUST understand superpowers:test-driven-development before using this skill. That skill defines the fundamental RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle. This skill adapts TDD to documentation.

Official guidance: For Anthropic's official skill authoring best practices, see anthropic-best-practices.md. This document provides additional patterns and guidelines that complement the TDD-focused approach in this skill.

What is a Skill?

A skill is a reference guide for proven techniques, patterns, or tools. Skills help future agents find and apply effective approaches.

Skills are: Reusable techniques, patterns, tools, reference guides

Skills are NOT: Narratives about how you solved a problem once

TDD Mapping for Skills

TDD Concept Skill Creation
Test case Pressure scenario with subagent
Production code Skill document (SKILL.md)
Test fails (RED) Agent violates rule without skill (baseline)
Test passes (GREEN) Agent complies with skill present
Refactor Close loopholes while maintaining compliance
Write test first Run baseline scenario BEFORE writing skill
Watch it fail Document exact rationalizations agent uses
Minimal code Write skill addressing those specific violations
Watch it pass Verify agent now complies
Refactor cycle Find new rationalizations → plug → re-verify

Read the full file on GitHub · 682 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 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. yesterday First seen · 682 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A 5400c0ec59c0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-skills is a skill published in the GitHub repository MissingPackage/nightshift (2 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 5,891 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 98% identical to writing-skills, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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