neon-postgres-branches

neon-postgres-branches is a skill for Claude Code from neondatabase/agent-skills. It costs 112 tokens per session (3,142 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A workflow for creating branches in Neon, a hosted PostgreSQL database service. It helps choose between a branch with copied data and a schema-only branch containing database structure without the rows.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create isolated development or test databases, test migrations against production-like data, protect sensitive data, reset branches, and manage branch lifecycles.
Why use it?
It avoids using the wrong test copy, especially when production data is sensitive or realistic data is needed for migration and performance checks.

Skill for Claude Code ✓ vendor

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the neon plugin — 7 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to create isolated development or test databases, test migrations against production-like data, protect sensitive data, reset branches, and manage branch lifecycles.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/neondatabase/agent-skills/neon-postgres-branches
About the project

Neon Agent Skills is a collection of agent instructions, scripts, and resources for working with Neon’s cloud backend services built around Lakebase Postgres. Developers, startups, and agent platforms use it to guide work with databases, branches, authentication, storage, functions, and AI Gateway services.

neondatabase/agent-skills · 87 stars · on GitHub

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 neondatabase/agent-skills --skill neon-postgres-branches
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/neondatabase/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install neon, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills.

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 neon-postgres-branches

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/neondatabase/agent-skills/neon-postgres-branches/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/neondatabase/agent-skills/neon-postgres-branches)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/neondatabase/agent-skills/neon-postgres-branches"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/neondatabase/agent-skills/neon-postgres-branches/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 neon-postgres-branches

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/neondatabase/agent-skills/neon-postgres-branches"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/neondatabase/agent-skills/neon-postgres-branches.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 112 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,142 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
  • Socket pass 20 May 2026
  • Snyk fail 20 May 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 3 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 Memory Poisoning · line 169
    Skill manipulates agent memory, state, or stored context. Memory corruption can alter personality, override safety rules, or cause unpredictable behavior.
    Fix: Protect agent memory and state from modification by untrusted content. Use read-only memory for critical instructions and validate all state changes.
  • medium Agent Snooping · line 19
    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 MCP Rug Pull · line 22
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
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 $0.00112 $0.03142
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.01571
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00628
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00314

Measured 9d ago against content hash 62d89fccabce, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

neon-postgres-branches 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 9d 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/neon-postgres/skills/neon-postgres-branches/SKILL.md · 293 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 293 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

FIRST: Use the parent neon skill for a Neon overview, getting started with Neon, Neon development best practices, and more.

If the neon skill is not installed, fetch it from https://neon.com/docs/ai/skills/neon/SKILL.md or install it with:

npx skills add neondatabase/agent-skills --skill neon

Lakebase Postgres Branching

Outcome: a created Neon branch — or a clear, actionable next step if creation cannot proceed. Choose the correct branch type, then execute branch creation with the CLI (or MCP where the CLI isn't usable).

  • Normal branch for realistic migration and query testing with real data.
  • Schema-only branch (Beta) for sensitive data workflows where structure is needed without copying rows.

Branch Type Decision

Use this decision rule first:

  1. If the user wants to test complex migrations, performance, or behavior against production-like data, choose a normal branch.
  2. If the user needs to avoid copying sensitive data, choose a schema-only branch.

If the request is ambiguous, ask one clarifying question: "Do you need realistic data for testing, or only schema structure because the data is sensitive?"

Tool Selection: CLI or MCP

Support both the Neon CLI and the Neon MCP server, but default to the CLI. Use MCP only when the CLI is unavailable or blocked in your environment, cannot be authenticated, or the user explicitly asks for MCP.

Selection order

  1. Check the CLI first:
    • Run neon --version to confirm the CLI is installed.
    • Run neon projects list to confirm auth/context.
  2. If the CLI is missing, direct installation via quickstart.
  3. If the CLI is installed but not authenticated, guide the user through neon auth (or API key auth), then continue.
  4. Switch to MCP when the CLI cannot be used — no CLI access in the environment, execution blocked, or authentication not possible — or when the user explicitly asks for MCP. Confirm Neon MCP tools are available and authenticated (for example, listing projects works), then follow the MCP branch flow below.
  5. If neither path is successful, use the Neon REST API:

Read the full file on GitHub · 293 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. 9d ago First seen · 293 lines · 112 tokens per session scan A 62d89fccabce

Subscribe to this mod's changes

neon-postgres-branches is a skill published in the GitHub repository neondatabase/agent-skills (87 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 112 tokens to every session and 3,142 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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