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.
npx skills add oaustegard/claude-skills --skill writing-instructionsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oaustegard/claude-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/writing-instructions)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/writing-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/writing-instructions/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/writing-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/writing-instructions.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00154 | $0.02219 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00062 | $0.00888 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00031 | $0.00444 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00015 | $0.00222 |
Grade A, and why
writing-instructions 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 170 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Writing Instructions for Claude
Principles and patterns for writing instructions that Claude follows reliably — whether as project instructions, standalone prompts, or skill content.
Overlap notice. crafting-instructions carries the same five core
principles and a fuller format-decision framework. The two were written
independently and never reconciled; a 2026-08-24 retrieval measurement put
their descriptions at 0.843 cosine, the most confusable pair in the 92-skill
catalogue. Until they are merged, this skill owns writing quality and
crafting-instructions owns the format decision.
Choosing the Right Format
Determine format before writing. The wrong container undermines good instructions.
Project instructions — persistent context for a workspace. Use when all conversations in a project need shared knowledge, team collaboration context, or initiative-specific behavior. Signals: "for this project," "all conversations about X," "team workspace." Read references/project-instructions.md for detailed guidance.
Standalone prompts — ephemeral, conversational, immediate. Use for one-off requests, ad-hoc direction, or conversational refinement. Signals: "for this task," "right now," "just this once." Read references/standalone-prompts.md for techniques.
Skill content — portable expertise that loads on-demand across contexts. Use when capability is needed across multiple projects, procedural knowledge applies broadly, and instructions should activate automatically on relevant triggers. Signals: "every time I," "whenever," "reusable," "teach Claude how to." For building full skills (structure, testing, iteration, packaging), use the skill-creator skill.
Combined approaches work well: project instructions provide "what you need to know" (reference material, context) while skills provide "how to do things" (methods, procedures). Read references/choosing-formats.md for detailed comparison and migration patterns.
What ships with it
5 files 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.
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.
- 1mo ago Changed · -2 lines 26c4c04cf40f
- 1mo ago First seen · 172 lines · 154 tokens per session scan A 10a704647385
writing-instructions is a skill published in the GitHub repository oaustegard/claude-skills (153 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 154 tokens to every session and 2,219 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-09-03.
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