nlweb-dev-patterns

nlweb-dev-patterns is a skill for Claude Code from OrcaQubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins. It costs 110 tokens per session (2,513 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to NLWeb's internal development patterns, including how requests flow through configuration, retrieval, ranking, and language-model calls. It also explains the current site and tool configuration files.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to trace queries, choose between NLWeb's fast and detailed processing paths, debug language-model calls, and update configuration or ranking behavior.
Why use it?
It helps developers change NLWeb without relying on outdated configuration advice or misunderstanding which code path handles a request.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is bert_checkpoint: ./checkpoints/modernbert.pt.

Part of the nlweb-protocol plugin — 13 skills, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it to trace queries, choose between NLWeb's fast and detailed processing paths, debug language-model calls, and update configuration or ranking behavior.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/OrcaQubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/nlweb-dev-patterns

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install nlweb-protocol, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 13 skills, 1 agent.

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 nlweb-dev-patterns

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/nlweb-dev-patterns/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/nlweb-dev-patterns)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/nlweb-dev-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/nlweb-dev-patterns/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 nlweb-dev-patterns

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/nlweb-dev-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/nlweb-dev-patterns.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 110 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,513 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 $0.00110 $0.02513
Opus 5 $0.00055 $0.01256
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00503
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00251

Measured 3d ago against content hash 844bb7289a7c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-17, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

nlweb-dev-patterns 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 3d 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.

nlweb-protocol/skills/nlweb-dev-patterns/SKILL.md · 208 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 208 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

NLWeb Development Patterns

Config layout changed upstream. NLWeb replaced the single site_types.xml with two files in config/: sites.xml (site name → itemType list + description) and tools.xml (per-site / per-type tool definitions, prompts and examples, scoped by <Site id="…"> / <Item> blocks). Older guidance — including any site_type / extends inheritance syntax — describes the retired file. Fetch config/sites.xml and config/tools.xml from the live repo before editing anything.

Before writing code

Fetch live docs:

  1. Fetch https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/blob/main/docs/nlweb-systemmap.md for module layout.
  2. Fetch https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/blob/main/docs/nlweb-control-flow.md for the request lifecycle.
  3. Fetch https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/blob/main/docs/life-of-a-chat-query.md for an end-to-end trace.
  4. Fetch https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/blob/main/docs/nlweb-configs-files.md for the config precedence rules.
  5. Inspect core/baseHandler.py, core/router.py, core/retriever.py, core/ranking.py for current code paths.

Pattern: Mixed-Mode Programming

NLWeb's defining design choice. Rather than one big LLM call per query, NLWeb makes many small calls, each with a strict JSON output schema (<returnStruc>), feeding Python control flow.

Implications:

  • Cost and latency scale with the number of call sites, not the size of any one call.
  • Failures are localized — one bad call doesn't poison the response.
  • Steerability is high — you can tune any single prompt without touching the rest.
  • Debugging is harder — you must trace which of N calls misbehaved.

When designing extensions, follow the same pattern: small, schema-constrained LLM calls, deterministic Python glue.

Pattern: FastTrack vs Analysis (Parallel Paths)

NLWebHandler runs two paths in parallel:

Path What it does When it wins
FastTrack Immediate vector search → stream early results Common queries with obvious retrieval matches
Analysis Decontextualize → detect type → route via ToolSelector to a specific handler Ambiguous queries, complex flows (compare, recipe substitution)

Read the full file on GitHub · 208 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. 3d ago First seen · 208 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 844bb7289a7c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

nlweb-dev-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository OrcaQubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins (39 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 110 tokens to every session and 2,513 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-09-15.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

pi-loop-forensics

Diagnose pi-go agent loops and degenerate turns — "agent loop aborted", runaway thinking with no tool calls, repeated phrases. Discriminates genuine model repetition collapse from a race, a tool-parse failure, or a too-low guard, and A/B replays a seed session across providers.

dimetron/pi-go · 65 tokens

nightly-session-watch

Nightly sweep of the last 24h of pi-go sessions — anomalous runs, loop aborts, tool error rates, token waste, real prompt-token spend, and whether the observation and palace pipelines are still recording. Triages each finding to the specialist skill that diagnoses it. Use for an unattended daily health check, or on…

dimetron/pi-go · 78 tokens

archestra-dev-llm-providers

Use when adding an LLM provider, changing proxy adapters or provider routes, fixing streaming/tool-call translation bugs, editing model fetchers or model handling, or touching provider credentials/enums and model constants.

archestra-ai/archestra · 49 tokens

archestra-dev-investigate

Use when investigating Archestra bugs or incidents — staging issues, backend 50x errors, Drizzle failed queries, DB connection pressure, deploy regressions, or Kubernetes/runtime symptoms. Orientation only; defers the process to /investigate.

archestra-ai/archestra · 54 tokens

chaingpt

Build with the ChainGPT Web3 AI developer platform. Full API/SDK reference and project scaffolding for: Web3 AI Chatbot & LLM, AI NFT Generator, Smart Contract Generator, Smart Contract Auditor, AI Crypto News, AgenticOS Twitter agents, and Solidity LLM. Use when building blockchain apps, Web3 chatbots, NFT tools…

internet-court/internet-court-skill · 132 tokens

ironmesh-peers

Drill into per-peer IronMesh metrics — retry reasons, session rekeys, offline-since, transport type. Use when ironmesh-status shows a problem on a specific peer and you need detail.

WizTheAgent/IronMesh · 47 tokens