technical-writing

technical-writing is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from monkilabs/opencastle. It costs 54 tokens per session (1,645 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of rules for writing technical documents that are clear on the first read, including READMEs, RFCs, pull-request descriptions, and commit messages. It covers document type, sentence style, simple wording, and removing ambiguity.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write or review developer documentation, RFCs, READMEs, pull-request descriptions, and commit messages.
Why use it?
It helps prevent dense, vague, or confusing technical prose. Readers can understand instructions and decisions without rereading them.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to write or review developer documentation, RFCs, READMEs, pull-request descriptions, and commit messages.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/monkilabs/opencastle/technical-writing
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 monkilabs/opencastle --skill technical-writing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/monkilabs/opencastle

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 technical-writing

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/monkilabs/opencastle/technical-writing/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/monkilabs/opencastle/technical-writing)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/monkilabs/opencastle/technical-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/monkilabs/opencastle/technical-writing/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 technical-writing

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/monkilabs/opencastle/technical-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/monkilabs/opencastle/technical-writing.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,645 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 pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00054 $0.01645
Opus 5 $0.00027 $0.00822
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00329
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00164

Measured 5d ago against content hash 246124ae48bc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

technical-writing 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.

src/orchestrator/skills/technical-writing/SKILL.md · 92 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 92 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Technical Writing

The goal is writing a tired engineer understands on the first read. Four layers get you there, one question each: what kind of document is this, how do sentences address the reader, how much does each sentence carry, and can any sentence be read two ways. Apply all four, then run the unslop skill over the result.

Three rules sit above the layers:

  • Cut every word that does no work. "In order to" is "to". "It is important to note that" is nothing.
  • Use the short, everyday word. "Use", not "utilize". A long word has to buy its length with precision.
  • When a rule makes a sentence worse, fix it another way or leave it alone. A sentence that follows every rule and sounds machine written has failed.

The codebase is the word list. Write the real symbol, file, flag, or command name, never a synonym or a description of it. Do not invent jargon; use the words a developer says out loud.

Layer 1: pick the mode (Diataxis)

One document, one mode. Two questions pick it: does the content inform action or understanding, and does it serve learning or work?

Learning Work
Action Tutorial How-to
Understanding Explanation Reference
  • Tutorial. You are the teacher and the learner's success is your job. Open with what they will build, not what they will "learn". Every step produces a visible result, and you say what they should see. Cut explanation to one clause and a link. Write as "we", in commands.
  • How-to. Solve a problem a person has, not an operation the machine can perform. Assume competence, skip teaching, allow forks: "If you want x, do y." Name it by the task.
  • Reference. Describe, only describe. No instruction, no opinion, no hedging. State facts, options, limits, and errors. Mirror the structure of the thing described. Generate from code where possible so it stays true.
  • Explanation. One bounded topic, readable away from the product. Each title should tolerate an implicit "About...". Give design decisions, history, constraints, alternatives. Opinion is allowed here and nowhere else.

Read the full file on GitHub · 92 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 · 92 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 246124ae48bc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

technical-writing is a skill published in the GitHub repository monkilabs/opencastle (61 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 1,645 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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