readme-standard

readme-standard is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from openclaw/agent-skills. It costs 33 tokens per session (1,442 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A house style guide for README files, which are the main project instructions shown to developers. It defines the order, tone, badges, templates, examples, and checks expected in steipete and openclaw repositories.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing or reviewing a README, especially to define the project in one sentence, provide a working quickstart, and keep advanced material organized.
Why use it?
It prevents public README files from using inconsistent structures or leaving strangers unsure what the project does and how to start it.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Which agent this was written for is unclear — built for openclaw. Also seen: built for openclaw.

Good fit Use it when writing or reviewing a README, especially to define the project in one sentence, provide a working quickstart, and keep advanced material organized.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/openclaw/agent-skills/readme-standard
About the project

OpenClaw Agent Skills is a shared repository of reusable workflows for coding agents working on OpenClaw projects. It provides skills for activities such as code-review closeout, behavior validation, session handoff, remote testing, transcript provenance, and viewing agent sessions. The catalogue entries are the project’s distributed skills and instruction.

openclaw/agent-skills · 1,079 stars · on GitHub

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 openclaw/agent-skills --skill readme-standard
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/openclaw/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 readme-standard

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/openclaw/agent-skills/readme-standard.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/openclaw/agent-skills/readme-standard)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/openclaw/agent-skills/readme-standard"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/openclaw/agent-skills/readme-standard.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,442 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00033 $0.01442
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00721
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00288
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00144

Measured 9d ago against content hash 63eb15336316, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

readme-standard 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 9d 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/readme-standard/SKILL.md · 125 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 125 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

README Standard

One structure for every public README in the steipete and openclaw orgs. Load this skill before writing or reviewing a README. The reference implementation is openclaw/fs-safe — read its README first if unsure what "good" looks like.

The spine

Every README answers, in order, with no detours:

  1. What is this? — one sentence a stranger understands.
  2. How do I use it? — smallest real install + a quickstart that proves the pitch.
  3. Progressively more complex — each section assumes the previous one; deep reference material moves to docs/ (or the docs site) and gets linked.

Concretely:

# <name> <one emoji> — <playful tagline, one line>

<badge row>

<1–2 sober sentences: what it is, who it is for. No adjectives doing the work
nouns should do.>

<OPTIONAL: one small code/terminal sample (≤10 lines) that demonstrates the
core value. If one sample can prove the pitch, put it here.>

## Install          ← smallest path first (brew/npm/npx), alternatives after
## Quick start      ← 60 seconds to first success; commands must actually run
## <core sections>  ← 2–6 sections, each one level deeper than the last
## Development      ← build/test/lint in ≤10 lines, link CONTRIBUTING if present
## License          ← one line

Rules

  • Title/tone: playful tagline with one emoji is welcome; the body is sober. First paragraph states plainly what the tool does and for whom.
  • No feature walls. A list of >6 marketing bullets is a smell. Fold real capabilities into the sections where they are demonstrated.
  • No changelog-speak ("now supports", "new in 3.2", "coming soon"). The README describes the present tense of the tool. Version-specific migration notes live in the changelog or docs/.
  • Length: aim ≤250 lines for tools/libraries, ≤350 for large surfaces. Anything beyond that moves to docs/ with a link. Exhaustive command/flag references belong in docs/ or the docs site, never in the README — a summary table with links is fine.
  • Progressive depth: a reader should be able to stop after any section and have a working setup for that level of use.
  • Screenshots/banners: keep existing project art. Apps and TUIs should show one screenshot near the top. Compress; no >500 KB images.
  • Docs sites win: when the repo has a docs site (fs-safe.io, gitcrawl.sh, …), the README is a front door, not a mirror. Link, don't duplicate.

Read the full file on GitHub · 125 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. 9d ago First seen · 125 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A 63eb15336316

Subscribe to this mod's changes

readme-standard is a skill published in the GitHub repository openclaw/agent-skills (1,079 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 1,442 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 2026-08-30.

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