documentation-first-setup

documentation-first-setup is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mlopscommunity/Coding-Agents-Conference-skills. It costs 38 tokens per session (3,309 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A documentation setup that records a codebase’s folders, file purposes, architecture, relationships, and design decisions for coding agents.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting a project, onboarding agents, updating documentation after refactoring, preparing parallel work, or correcting confusing project documentation.
Why use it?
It gives agents the context needed to navigate an unfamiliar project and make changes without repeatedly guessing or asking basic questions.

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/mlopscommunity/coding-agents-conference-skills/documentation-first-setup
Any agent
npx skills add mlopscommunity/Coding-Agents-Conference-skills --skill documentation-first-setup
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mlopscommunity/Coding-Agents-Conference-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 documentation-first-setup

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mlopscommunity/coding-agents-conference-skills/documentation-first-setup.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mlopscommunity/coding-agents-conference-skills/documentation-first-setup)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mlopscommunity/coding-agents-conference-skills/documentation-first-setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mlopscommunity/coding-agents-conference-skills/documentation-first-setup.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,309 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 $0.00038 $0.03309
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.01655
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00662
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00331

Measured 5d ago against content hash e70f382b22e0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

documentation-first-setup 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 5d 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/documentation-first-setup/SKILL.md · 443 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 443 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Documentation-First Setup

Overview

The Documentation-First Setup Skill creates and maintains comprehensive documentation that helps agents navigate code effectively. Agents navigate codebases via semantic search and tree-walking. Without good docs, they get lost, make assumptions, and produce lower-quality work. Humans traditionally don't maintain documentation because it's tedious. But agents should do it—their time is cheaper than ours.

Core principle: Well-documented code lets agents navigate independently and make architecture-aware decisions. Poorly documented code makes agents ask basic questions instead of shipping features.

Dependency: Claude Code CLI with access to read files and create documentation.

When to Use

  • New project setup: Establish documentation foundations from day one
  • Onboarding new agents: Before assigning complex tasks
  • After significant refactors: Update documentation to reflect new structure
  • Before parallel work: Ensure agents have clear understanding of architecture
  • Code review time: When you notice agents are confused about how things work
  • Quarterly maintenance: Refresh documentation to match current codebase state

When NOT to Use

  • Small, trivial projects (single file, obvious structure)
  • When nobody will ever touch the code again
  • For third-party or generated code (document around it, not within it)

Common Mistakes

Mistake Why it's wrong
Over-documenting obvious things "The User class represents a user" wastes time. Focus on why and how, not what.
Not documenting design decisions Agents and humans both ask "why is this structured this way?" Design decisions are the most valuable documentation.
Letting documentation drift Docs that don't match code become lies. Update docs as part of code changes, not later.
Making READMEs longer than code If your README is longer than the code, you're documenting the wrong things.
Orphaning cross-references If A mentions B, B should mention A. If links are broken, documentation becomes useless.

Read the full file on GitHub · 443 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. 5d ago First seen · 443 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A e70f382b22e0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

documentation-first-setup is a skill published in the GitHub repository mlopscommunity/Coding-Agents-Conference-skills (37 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 3,309 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.

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