skill-knowledge-work

skill-knowledge-work is a skill for Claude Code from nyldn/claude-octopus. It costs 22 tokens per session (1,848 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A setting that forces an agent session into Knowledge Work mode for research and writing instead of code-focused work. It can also return the session to automatic context detection.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to turn Knowledge Work mode on or off, return to automatic detection, or check the current mode.
Why use it?
It is useful when the automatic choice between coding and research behavior is incorrect or when the whole session needs one fixed mode.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions Codex.

Part of the octo plugin — 69 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 20 hooks shipped together

About the project

Claude Octopus is an orchestration project that sends research, design, and coding tasks to Claude Code and other AI model providers so their results can be compared. Developers use it for multi-model work, disagreement detection, reviews, persistent context, and an optional workflow that moves from discovery through delivery. The catalogue entries are its commands, skills, agents, instructions, hooks, plugins, and settings.

nyldn/claude-octopus · 4,050 stars · on GitHub · reddit.com

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/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-knowledge-work
Any agent
npx skills add nyldn/claude-octopus --skill skill-knowledge-work
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nyldn/claude-octopus

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install octo, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 69 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 20 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 skill-knowledge-work

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-knowledge-work.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-knowledge-work)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-knowledge-work"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-knowledge-work.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,848 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 5.1 $0.00022 $0.01848
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00924
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00370
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00185

Measured 6d ago against content hash 2cbbb26107a0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

skill-knowledge-work 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 6d 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.

.claude/skills/skill-knowledge-work/SKILL.md · 232 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 232 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Knowledge Work Mode - Context Override Skill

Context Auto-Detection (v7.8+)

Claude Octopus now auto-detects work context! The system analyzes your prompt and project to determine whether you're in a Dev Context (code-focused) or Knowledge Context (research/strategy-focused).

You typically don't need this skill - context is detected automatically when you use:

  • octo research X - Auto-detects dev vs knowledge research
  • octo build X - Auto-detects code vs document building
  • octo review X - Auto-detects code vs document review

When to Use This Override

Use ONLY when auto-detection is wrong:

  • Auto-detection chose Dev but you want Knowledge behavior
  • Auto-detection chose Knowledge but you want Dev behavior
  • You want to force a specific context for the entire session

Override Commands

Force Knowledge Context

/octo:km on

All subsequent workflows will use Knowledge Context until reset.

Force Dev Context

/octo:km off

All subsequent workflows will use Dev Context until reset.

Return to Auto-Detection

/octo:km auto

Context detection returns to automatic mode.

Check Current Status

/octo:km

Shows current mode (auto, knowledge, or dev).

How Auto-Detection Works

When you use any octo workflow, context is detected by analyzing:

  1. Prompt Content (strongest signal):

    • Knowledge indicators: "market", "ROI", "stakeholders", "strategy", "personas", "presentation", "report", "PRD"
    • Dev indicators: "API", "endpoint", "database", "implementation", "code", "function", "deploy"
  2. Project Type (secondary signal):

    • Has package.json, Cargo.toml, go.mod → Dev Context
    • Mostly .md, .docx, .pdf files → Knowledge Context
  3. Explicit Override (if set via /octo:km):

    • Overrides all auto-detection until reset to "auto"

Visual Indicator Shows Context

When workflows run, you'll see the detected context in the banner:

Dev Context:

🐙 **CLAUDE OCTOPUS ACTIVATED** - Multi-provider research mode
🔍 [Dev] Discover Phase: Technical research on caching patterns

Read the full file on GitHub · 232 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. 6d ago First seen · 232 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 2cbbb26107a0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

skill-knowledge-work is a skill published in the GitHub repository nyldn/claude-octopus (4,050 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 1,848 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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