generate-adr

generate-adr is a skill for Claude Code from nortonx/ai-tooling-free. It costs 42 tokens per session (2,090 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A tool for creating an Architecture Decision Record (ADR), a short document explaining an important technical choice, its context, and its consequences.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to document choices such as changing a database or replacing a development tool, with numbering, status tracking, and links to decisions it replaces.
Why use it?
It gives decisions a consistent written record so future developers can understand why the system was designed that way.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit Use it to document choices such as changing a database or replacing a development tool, with numbering, status tracking, and links to decisions it replaces.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nortonx/ai-tooling-free/generate-adr
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 nortonx/ai-tooling-free --skill generate-adr
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nortonx/ai-tooling-free

Made for: Claude Code.

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 generate-adr

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nortonx/ai-tooling-free/generate-adr/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nortonx/ai-tooling-free/generate-adr)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nortonx/ai-tooling-free/generate-adr"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nortonx/ai-tooling-free/generate-adr/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 generate-adr

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nortonx/ai-tooling-free/generate-adr"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nortonx/ai-tooling-free/generate-adr.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,090 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 $0.00042 $0.02090
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.01045
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00418
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00209

Measured 12d ago against content hash 7eac7ece6719, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

generate-adr 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 12d 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/generate-adr/SKILL.md · 151 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 151 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Arguments

<decision title>

  • Required. About 7 words describing the decision; the interview asks for it (Q1) but you can prefill via the arg.
  • Examples: /generate-adr Adopt Lefthook in place of Husky, /generate-adr Switch primary database to PostgreSQL

Copilot CLI note: $ARGUMENTS doesn't substitute in skills — include the argument inline in your prompt.

Generate ADR: $ARGUMENTS

Create an Architecture Decision Record (ADR) in Michael Nygard's canonical 2011 format. ADRs are short — typically one page — and record a single architectural decision: its context, the decision itself, and its consequences. Detect the local ADR convention, interview the user one question at a time, draft an ADR that matches their team's existing style, and write it to disk only after explicit approval.

ADRs document decisions, not aspirations. The user provides the substance; this skill scaffolds structure and enforces brevity. Never pad empty sections with "TBD" — omit them entirely.

Step 1 — Orient

Probe the working directory for an existing ADR location, in this order:

  1. docs/adr/ — Nygard's recommendation, the most common convention.
  2. docs/architecture/decisions/ — corporate / monorepo convention.
  3. doc/adr/ — Linux-kernel-style.
  4. adr/ at repo root — rare but valid.
  • Exactly one exists → use it.
  • Multiple exist → ask which to write to.
  • None exist → propose docs/adr/ and tell the user you'll bootstrap it at write-time, including an index README.

List existing ADRs by globbing <dir>/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-*.md. Parse the largest 4-digit prefix; the next ADR's number is max + 1, zero-padded to 4 digits. Never gap-fill — gaps reflect deleted or rejected drafts and are part of the history.

If at least one ADR exists, read the highest-numbered one as a tone reference so the new ADR matches the team's prose style (terseness, header casing, language).

Read the full file on GitHub · 151 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. 12d ago First seen · 151 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 7eac7ece6719

Subscribe to this mod's changes

generate-adr is a skill published in the GitHub repository nortonx/ai-tooling-free (1 stars, last pushed 27d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 2,090 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 2026-08-31.

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