write-a-skill

write-a-skill is a skill for Claude Code from OutlineDriven/odin-codex-plugin. It costs 80 tokens per session (900 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A workflow for creating one new coding-agent skill, including its instruction file and optional supporting materials.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps define a skill's purpose, boundaries, trigger phrases, scripts, references, examples, and evaluation checks.
Why use it?
It helps keep a skill focused, easy for an agent to trigger, and organized so detailed guidance is loaded only when needed.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions AGENTS.md.

Good fit It helps define a skill's purpose, boundaries, trigger phrases, scripts, references, examples, and evaluation checks.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/outlinedriven/odin-codex-plugin/write-a-skill
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 OutlineDriven/odin-codex-plugin --skill write-a-skill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/OutlineDriven/odin-codex-plugin

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 write-a-skill

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/outlinedriven/odin-codex-plugin/write-a-skill.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/outlinedriven/odin-codex-plugin/write-a-skill)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/outlinedriven/odin-codex-plugin/write-a-skill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/outlinedriven/odin-codex-plugin/write-a-skill.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 80 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 900 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 $0.00080 $0.00900
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.00450
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00180
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00090

Measured 4d ago against content hash 9889d4da257c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

write-a-skill 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 4d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/write-a-skill/SKILL.md · 84 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 84 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Skill authoring loop: gather requirements, draft against the SKILL.md contract, review with the user, refine. One concern per skill; one skill per directory. Apply the skill-creator:skill-creator methodology (three-level progressive disclosure, pushy descriptions, evals.json).

Scope disambiguation

  • write-a-skill — authors one SKILL.md for one capability inside an existing skills tree.
  • Repo onboarding — onboards a whole repository, scaffolds AGENTS.md and project conventions.
  • skill-creator:skill-creator — the upstream methodology this skill applies; consult it for the canonical contract.

Authoring loop

  1. Gather requirements — surface decisions before drafting:

    • Capability boundary: what task does the skill cover, what does it explicitly not cover?
    • Trigger phrases: which user phrases or contexts should load it?
    • Determinism: any operation deterministic enough to live in a script rather than re-generated prose?
    • Bundled references: docs, schemas, or examples to include?
    • Static guarantee context: language family (Rust, TypeScript, Python, Kotlin, Go, OCaml, …) — affects testing-charter scope.
  2. Draft the SKILL.md — write to the contract below. Keep body terse and decision-oriented.

  3. Review with the user — present the draft, surface ambiguous decisions, and refine.

  4. Verify — run any bundled evals.json cases; targeted re-read of the SKILL.md to confirm description triggers and body alignment.

Directory layout

skill-name/
  SKILL.md              # contract; required
  references/           # deeper docs loaded on-demand
    REFERENCE.md
    EXAMPLES.md
  scripts/              # deterministic helpers
    helper.{ts,py,sh}
  evals.json            # trigger / behavior evals

Reference paths in SKILL.md use references/X.md, never ./X.md.

SKILL.md contract

---
name: skill-name
description: <what the skill does>. <when to trigger it — concrete phrases or contexts>.
---

<One-line imperative summary of the skill's posture.>

## <Section> — terse decision-oriented prose

<Body in imperative voice with brief why. ≤200 lines.>

Read the full file on GitHub · 84 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. 4d ago First seen · 84 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A 9889d4da257c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

write-a-skill is a skill published in the GitHub repository OutlineDriven/odin-codex-plugin (15 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 900 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

git-guardrails-claude-code

Install a Claude-Code PreToolUse hook that blocks destructive git commands (push variants including force-push, hard reset, force clean, branch -D, checkout/restore overwrites) before Bash runs them. Use when the user wants git safety rails, force-push prevention, or repository-wipe protection.

OutlineDriven/odin-gemini-cli-extension · 71 tokens

duet

Two-party posture — user as director, agent as executor; every fork, tradeoff, or choice surfaced via batched AskUserQuestion with a recommended default. Use when the user invokes /duet, says "ask before" / "pair with me" / "human-in-the-loop", or for aesthetic/architectural/irreversible decisions.

OutlineDriven/odin-gemini-cli-extension · 73 tokens

explore

Read-only codebase exploration: discovery, structural reading, and emission of architecture/pattern/tooling/dependency summaries. Use to understand existing code, map files, trace function flow, locate symbols, or build pre-implementation context. Uses a staged 1/3/5 Explore-agent escalation protocol scaled to scope.…

OutlineDriven/odin-gemini-cli-extension · 122 tokens

deps-upgrade

Dependency-upgrade campaign — outdated scan, batch-by-severity, breaking-change remediation, lockfile audit. Use when CVEs require remediation, when a major upstream version lands, when stack compatibility forces a sweep, or on a scheduled (quarterly) hygiene cadence. CVE-driven bumps consume security audit findings…

OutlineDriven/odin-gemini-cli-extension · 68 tokens

type-driven

Type-driven development. Use when developing with refined types, state machines encoded in types, or proof-carrying types; enforces totality and exhaustive pattern matching.

OutlineDriven/odin-gemini-cli-extension · 36 tokens

design-by-contract

Design-by-Contract (DbC) development. Use when implementing with formal preconditions, postconditions, and invariants across any language.

OutlineDriven/odin-gemini-cli-extension · 32 tokens