packer

packer is a skill for Claude Code from poindexter12/waypoint. It costs 80 tokens per session (1,491 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reference guide for HashiCorp Packer, a tool that builds reusable machine images and virtual-machine templates from configuration files. It also covers Proxmox, a platform for running virtual machines and containers.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create and validate Packer configurations, build VM images, prepare cloud-init templates, configure provisioners, or create Proxmox templates for a home lab.
Why use it?
It puts common Packer commands, configuration patterns, and troubleshooting guidance in one place, reducing guesswork when image builds fail or need to be repeated.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: agent in frontmatter.

Part of the technologies plugin — 7 skills, 6 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to create and validate Packer configurations, build VM images, prepare cloud-init templates, configure provisioners, or create Proxmox templates for a home lab.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/poindexter12/waypoint/packer
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 poindexter12/waypoint --skill packer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/poindexter12/waypoint

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install technologies, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 6 agents.

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 packer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/poindexter12/waypoint/packer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/poindexter12/waypoint/packer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/poindexter12/waypoint/packer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/poindexter12/waypoint/packer.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 1,491 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 $0.01491
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.00745
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00298
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00149

Measured 8d ago against content hash da443c602927, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

packer 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 8d 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.

technologies/skills/packer/SKILL.md · 234 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 234 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Packer Skill

Reference for building machine images with HashiCorp Packer, focusing on VM template creation for homelab environments.

Quick Reference

# Core workflow
packer init .               # Initialize, download plugins
packer validate .           # Syntax validation
packer fmt -recursive .     # Format HCL files
packer build .              # Build image(s)

# Debug
packer build -debug .                     # Step through build
PACKER_LOG=1 packer build . 2>debug.log   # Verbose logging

# Specific template
packer build ubuntu-22.04.pkr.hcl

Core Workflow

init → fmt → validate → build
  1. init: Download required plugins (builders, provisioners)
  2. fmt: Format HCL files for consistency
  3. validate: Check syntax and configuration validity
  4. build: Execute the build process

Reference Files

Load on-demand based on task:

Topic File When to Load
Troubleshooting troubleshooting.md Build failures, SSH issues
Proxmox Builder proxmox/builder.md proxmox-iso builder config
Cloud-Init cloud-init.md Cloud-init template setup
Provisioners provisioners.md Shell, Ansible, file provisioners

HCL2 Syntax

Packer uses HCL2 (same as Terraform). Key blocks:

# Required plugins
packer {
  required_plugins {
    proxmox = {
      version = ">= 1.1.0"
      source  = "github.com/hashicorp/proxmox"
    }
  }
}

# Variables
variable "proxmox_api_url" {
  type        = string
  description = "Proxmox API URL"
}

# Local values
locals {
  timestamp = formatdate("YYYYMMDD-hhmm", timestamp())
}

# Builder source
source "proxmox-iso" "ubuntu" {
  # ... builder config
}

# Build definition
build {
  sources = ["source.proxmox-iso.ubuntu"]

  provisioner "shell" {
    scripts = ["scripts/setup.sh"]
  }
}

Proxmox Builder Quick Start

Read the full file on GitHub · 234 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 8d ago First seen · 234 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A da443c602927

Subscribe to this mod's changes

packer is a skill published in the GitHub repository poindexter12/waypoint (7 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 1,491 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 2026-08-31.

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