What is read-the-docs-first?

A rule to consult official documentation before working with unfamiliar or changing software tools. It applies to APIs, libraries, frameworks, command-line tools, cloud services, and provider SDKs.

Use it before implementing, integrating, upgrading, debugging, or answering questions about third-party software or current product behavior.

It reduces errors caused by outdated assumptions about supported behavior, settings, limits, authentication, or interfaces.

read-the-docs-first — Skill for Claude Code by patrickdappollonio

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 patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins --skill read-the-docs-first

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install read-the-docs-first, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins/read-the-docs-first/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins/read-the-docs-first)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins/read-the-docs-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins/read-the-docs-first/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins/read-the-docs-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins/read-the-docs-first.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 107 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,433 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 95% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00107	$0.01433
Opus 5.5	$0.00043	$0.00573
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00021	$0.00287
Haiku 4.5	$0.00011	$0.00143

Measured 1mo ago against content hash cd026cebbc47, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

read-the-docs-first 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 1mo 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

This is a copy

95% identical to read-the-damn-docs — 136 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/read-the-docs-first/skills/read-the-docs-first/SKILL.md · 65 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 65 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Read The Docs First

Do not guess where authoritative docs can answer the question. The most common right move is to web-search for the current official docs, open the relevant pages, and read them before coding. For APIs, versions, provider behavior, config, limits, lifecycle hooks, or security-sensitive flows, ground the answer in what the docs actually say.

Docs-First Triggers

Read docs before proceeding when any of these are true:

The user asks for "latest", "current", "official", "supported", "best practice", "recommended", "today", "now", or "look it up".
The needed docs are not already in the repo or supplied by the user. Search the web for the official docs rather than hoping model memory is current.
The task adds, upgrades, configures, or imports a package, SDK, framework, plugin, CLI, model, cloud resource, or provider integration.
The API is fast-moving or version-sensitive: AI SDKs, OpenAI/Anthropic/Google APIs, Next.js, React, Tailwind, Vite, Nitro, Drizzle, Prisma, Stripe, GitHub, Slack, Notion, browser APIs, deployment platforms, auth libraries, and similar.
The implementation depends on auth, OAuth scopes, permissions, secrets, webhooks, billing, payments, PII, encryption, data retention, migrations, retries, rate limits, quotas, caching, deploys, or compliance.
An error mentions deprecation, unknown options, missing exports, invalid config, unsupported fields, changed defaults, or version mismatch.
A repo has local docs, ADRs, generated schemas, OpenAPI specs, route/action registries, design-system docs, or package-level READMEs that could define the contract.
The choice is expensive to reverse: public wire formats, database schema, migration strategy, persistent IDs, event names, customer-visible behavior, or external automation contracts.
You catch yourself about to write "usually", "probably", "I think", "from memory", or code copied from model memory for an external API.

What Counts As Docs

Use the most authoritative source available:

Read the full file on GitHub · 65 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.

1mo ago Changed · -55 lines cd026cebbc47
2mo ago First seen · 120 lines · 107 tokens per session scan A c8eb2f15addd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

read-the-docs-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository patrickdappollonio/claude-plugins (9 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 107 tokens to every session and 1,433 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 95% identical to read-the-damn-docs, differing in 136 lines, and is treated as a copy.

read-the-docs-first next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
read-the-docs-firstpatrickdappollonio/claude-plugins	Skill	9	yesterday	MIT	A	107	Claude Code
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	133k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	99k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	4d ago	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	313k	3d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	95	Claude Code
next-partial-prefetching-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	103	Claude Code