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 agentmods add skills/obra/superpowers/writing-skillsnpx skills add obra/superpowers --skill writing-skillsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/obra/superpowersWhat 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 | $0.00020 | $0.05841 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00010 | $0.02920 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00004 | $0.01168 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00002 | $0.00584 |
Grade A, and why
writing-skills 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 2d 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.
Copies of this mod
8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- writing-skills — 100% identical, 136 lines differ
- writing-skills — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- writing-skills — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- writing-skills — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- writing-skills — 98% identical, 2 lines differ
- writing-skills — 97% identical, 2 lines differ
- writing-skills — 97% identical, 10 lines differ
- writing-skills — 95% identical, 12 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 680 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Writing Skills
Overview
Writing skills IS Test-Driven Development applied to process documentation.
Personal skills live in your runtime's skills directory (~/.claude/skills/ on Claude Code) — see codex-tools.md or gemini-tools.md for the path on those runtimes. Codex, Copilot CLI, and Gemini CLI all also recognize ~/.agents/skills/ as a cross-runtime alias.
You write test cases (pressure scenarios with subagents), watch them fail (baseline behavior), write the skill (documentation), watch tests pass (agents comply), and refactor (close loopholes).
Core principle: If you didn't watch an agent fail without the skill, you don't know if the skill teaches the right thing.
REQUIRED BACKGROUND: You MUST understand superpowers:test-driven-development before using this skill. That skill defines the fundamental RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle. This skill adapts TDD to documentation.
Official guidance: For Anthropic's official skill authoring best practices, see anthropic-best-practices.md. This document provides additional patterns and guidelines that complement the TDD-focused approach in this skill.
What is a Skill?
A skill is a reference guide for proven techniques, patterns, or tools. Skills help future agents find and apply effective approaches.
Skills are: Reusable techniques, patterns, tools, reference guides
Skills are NOT: Narratives about how you solved a problem once
TDD Mapping for Skills
| TDD Concept | Skill Creation |
|---|---|
| Test case | Pressure scenario with subagent |
| Production code | Skill document (SKILL.md) |
| Test fails (RED) | Agent violates rule without skill (baseline) |
| Test passes (GREEN) | Agent complies with skill present |
| Refactor | Close loopholes while maintaining compliance |
| Write test first | Run baseline scenario BEFORE writing skill |
| Watch it fail | Document exact rationalizations agent uses |
| Minimal code | Write skill addressing those specific violations |
| Watch it pass | Verify agent now complies |
| Refactor cycle | Find new rationalizations → plug → re-verify |
What ships with it
6 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.
- 2d ago First seen · 680 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A d34db5c8aed6
writing-skills is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers (280,216 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 5,841 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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