documentation-patterns

A set of templates for organising technical documentation, such as API references, feature guides, configuration instructions, and migration guides. It focuses on document structure and consistent Markdown sections.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose and apply a suitable structure when creating API, feature, configuration, migration, runbook, or similar technical documents.
Why use it?
It removes the need to decide the document layout from scratch or apply different section orders across projects.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/documentation-patterns
Any agent
npx skills add PracticalSwan/agent-skills --skill documentation-patterns
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PracticalSwan/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 39 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,172 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00039 $0.01172
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00586
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00234
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00117

Measured 2d ago against content hash 13e5de47e4c5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

documentation-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 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/doc-template-picker.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

documentation-patterns/SKILL.md · 112 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Documentation Patterns

Use this skill when the main problem is document shape and consistency rather than writing quality alone.

  • Leverage native parallel subagent dispatch and 200k+ context windows where available.

Activation Conditions

Use symptom -> action triggers: when one matches, apply this skill and verify with the protocol below.

  • Creating a new API, feature, or config guide
  • Standardizing Markdown sections across repositories
  • Writing migration or runbook documents
  • Picking the right template for a doc request

Pattern Selection

  • API docs: endpoints, auth, request and response schema, errors
  • Feature docs: purpose, UX, dependencies, rollout, support
  • Config docs: env vars, defaults, examples, failure modes
  • Migration docs: changed behavior, upgrade path, verification

Cross-Skill Workflow

  • Use documentation-authoring to gather context and draft the content before template selection becomes the bottleneck.
  • Use this skill when structure, section order, or template choice is the main problem.
  • Finish with documentation-quality to review the final document against quality expectations.

Agent Prompt Template

Use the documentation-patterns skill to choose and apply the best structure for a [document type].
Context: [feature, system, migration, or runbook].
Bias toward: [API docs, feature docs, config guide, migration guide, etc.].
Return the recommended section outline with short notes on why each section exists.

Shared Documentation Stack

Use this as the inherited baseline for documentation-authoring, documentation-quality, documentation-automation, and documentation-verification.

  1. Source of truth: identify owner, audience, canonical files, and freshness requirements before drafting.
  2. Structure: choose the smallest reusable pattern that fits the reader task.
  3. Verification: check links, commands, examples, screenshots, and version-sensitive claims before publishing.
  4. Handoff: state unresolved gaps, owners, and next review trigger instead of implying false completeness.

Read the full file on GitHub · 112 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 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. 2d ago First seen · 112 lines · 39 tokens per session scan A 13e5de47e4c5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

documentation-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository PracticalSwan/agent-skills (11 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 1,172 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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