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distill

distill is a skill for Claude Code from nicograef/handbook. It costs 58 tokens per session (1,078 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for radically shortening and reorganizing prose across a repository, including documentation, comments, and configuration text. It keeps only information that readers cannot derive elsewhere.

In plain words
What is it for?
Reworking Markdown files, READMEs, docs, code comments, and configuration comments across an entire repository.
Why use it?
It removes outdated, duplicated, generic, and aspirational text so the remaining documentation is easier to find and read.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions AGENTS.md.

Part of the nico plugin — 10 skills, 1 agent, 4 hooks shipped together

not rated 2repo changed 18d ago A scan 58 tokens original MIT

Good fit Reworking Markdown files, READMEs, docs, code comments, and configuration comments across an entire repository.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nicograef/handbook/distill
View source ↗ nicograef/handbook
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 nicograef/handbook --skill distill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicograef/handbook

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install nico, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 1 agent, 4 hooks.

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 distill

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicograef/handbook/distill/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicograef/handbook/distill)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicograef/handbook/distill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicograef/handbook/distill/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 distill

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicograef/handbook/distill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicograef/handbook/distill.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 58 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,078 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.
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 $0.00058 $0.01078
Opus 5.5 $0.00023 $0.00431
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00012 $0.00216
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00108

Measured 18d ago against content hash b50f62980f93, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

distill 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 18d 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.

plugin/skills/distill/SKILL.md · 59 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 59 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Distill

Keep only what a reader cannot get anywhere else. Ask of every line: with no docs, would I write this today? With verify as the first argument, run the Verify section instead.

Hard rules

  • Start on a clean working tree; git is the only undo. No archive directories, no .old copies.
  • Never invent, alter or "correct" a fact, command, flag, path or version from memory. Keep it, delete it, or flag it.
  • A claim you cannot verify this session is FLAG, not DELETE. Deleting what you failed to understand is this skill's main damage.
  • Agent instruction surfaces (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .claude/rules/*, .claude/agents/*) restate the obvious by design. Cut from them only what is false or duplicated.
  • Legal and compliance text stays. Generated docs are fixed at the generator. Code stays; only comments and docstrings are in scope.
  • Code quality is /simplify; agent state is /nico:prog.

Distill

  1. Inventory every prose file and comment-heavy source in scope; the line count is the before-number.
  2. Read each file in full against the lenses below; fan out to read-only opus reviewers on a large corpus. Every cut names what supersedes or duplicates it.
  3. Cross-file pass yourself: one canonical home per duplicated claim. Two docs that disagree are the top finding; the code decides, else FLAG both.
  4. Infer who reads which files from the repo; the audience sets the keep-bar.
  5. plan-only commits the plan as docs/plans/plan-distill-<scope>.md and stops.
  6. Apply. Then grep -r every deleted or renamed name, fix each hit, and run make check.
  7. Commit docs: distill <scope> with every FLAG as file:line in the body; the next session inherits it. Report before → after lines.
  8. Name /nico:distill verify in a fresh session as the final phase. A session cannot audit its own output.

What dies:

  • Historic residue: "previously", session records, finished migration guides, dated status. A still-operative constraint stays.
  • Derivable: listings and inventories that mirror a Makefile, --help, config or signatures. Link the source instead.
  • Common knowledge for the audience, docs for unbuilt features, ceremonial sections, padding.
  • Comments that restate code or type. Contracts the type cannot express stay: units, ownership, side effects.

Read the full file on GitHub · 59 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 18d ago Changed · -10 lines · -1 tokens per session b50f62980f93
  2. 23d ago Changed 1891a023b491
  3. 28d ago Changed · +1 lines · +59 tokens per session 2d8811ba9272
  4. 1mo ago Changed 0728884c9531
  5. 1mo ago Changed · -217 lines · -143 tokens per session 9dacf9431441
  6. 2mo ago Changed · -4 lines 010694a7220c
  7. 2mo ago First seen · 289 lines · 143 tokens per session scan A 98ce19786479

Subscribe to this mod's changes

distill is a skill published in the GitHub repository nicograef/handbook (2 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 1,078 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-31.

Writing and docs
Related

distill compared with skills from other repositories

distill next to 6 skills from other repositories
ModTypeStarsLast pushLicenceScanTokensWorks with
distillnicograef/handbookSkill22d agoMITA58Claude Code
imagegenopenai/codexSkill133kyesterdayApache-2.0A113Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwrightSkill99kyesterdayApache-2.0A19Claude Code
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginnersSkill79k4d agoMITA200Claude Code, Codex
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowersSkill313k3d agoMITA21Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.jsSkill143kyesterdayMITA95Claude Code
next-partial-prefetching-adoptionvercel/next.jsSkill143kyesterdayMITA103Claude Code