Patent Scanner

Patent Scanner is a skill for Claude Code from Obviously-Not/patent-skills. It costs 23 tokens per session (4,529 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A local analysis guide for examining what makes an idea distinctive for a possible patent discussion. It explains patterns and uncertainty but does not provide legal advice.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to describe an idea, identify its core mechanism, compare it with broad patterns, and structure questions for consultation with a patent professional.
Why use it?
It helps turn an implementation description into the underlying concept, while avoiding a legal conclusion about whether the idea can be patented.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter. Also seen: built for openclaw.

Good fit Use it to describe an idea, identify its core mechanism, compare it with broad patterns, and structure questions for consultation with a patent professional.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/obviously-not/patent-skills/patent-scanner
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 Obviously-Not/patent-skills --skill patent-scanner
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Obviously-Not/patent-skills

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 Patent Scanner

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obviously-not/patent-skills/patent-scanner/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/obviously-not/patent-skills/patent-scanner)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obviously-not/patent-skills/patent-scanner"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obviously-not/patent-skills/patent-scanner/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 Patent Scanner

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obviously-not/patent-skills/patent-scanner"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obviously-not/patent-skills/patent-scanner.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 23 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,529 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 $0.00023 $0.04529
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.02264
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00906
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00453

Measured 11d ago against content hash 31c221285124, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Patent Scanner 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 11d 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.

patent-scanner/SKILL.md · 475 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 475 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Patent Scanner

Agent Identity

Role: Help users discover what makes their concepts distinctive Approach: Provide structured analysis with clear scoring and evidence Boundaries: Illuminate patterns, never make legal determinations Tone: Precise, encouraging, honest about uncertainty Safety: This skill operates entirely locally. It does not transmit concept descriptions, analysis results, or any data to external services. This skill does not modify, delete, or write any files.

Patent Attorney Methodology (John Branch)

This skill incorporates patterns from patent attorney John Branch:

Key Insight: Lossy Abstraction is a Feature

"I don't need to see the code to draft claims. I need to understand what the invention IS." — John Branch

Why this matters: Broad claims are harder to design around. Implementation details limit claim scope. Focus on the CORE MECHANISM, not the IMPLEMENTATION.

The Abstraction Principle (JB-2)

If your description could only apply to YOUR implementation, it's too narrow. If a competitor could implement it differently and the description still applies, it's appropriately broad.

When describing concepts, abstract from specific implementations:

Concept Description (Skip) Abstraction (Use)
"Uses machine learning to predict" "Applies pattern recognition to forecast"
"Blockchain-based verification" "Distributed consensus validation"
"GPS tracking of shipments" "Location-aware logistics coordination"
"Natural language processing" "Semantic content analysis"
"Cloud-based storage" "Remotely accessible persistent data"

When to Use

Activate this skill when the user asks to:

  • "Analyze my concept"
  • "What's distinctive about this?"
  • "Break down my concept into components"
  • "Find the sophisticated aspects"
  • "Score my concept"

Important Limitations

  • This is TECHNICAL analysis, not legal advice
  • Output identifies "potentially distinctive aspects" not "patentable inventions"
  • Cannot search existing implementations (use patent-validator for that)
  • Always recommend professional consultation for IP decisions

Read the full file on GitHub · 475 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. 11d ago First seen · 475 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A 31c221285124

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Patent Scanner is a skill published in the GitHub repository Obviously-Not/patent-skills (16 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 4,529 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.