better-skill-review

better-skill-review is a skill for Claude Code from psylch/better-skills. It costs 133 tokens per session (1,643 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A review workflow for coding-agent skills, which are instruction packages that guide an agent's work. It combines automated checks with a structured review of the skill's instructions and behaviour.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect a skill, run its validation and analysis tools, assess the findings, and identify improvements.
Why use it?
It helps find unclear descriptions, weak workflows, unsafe runtime assumptions and other problems before a skill is used.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Part of the better-skills plugin — 3 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to inspect a skill, run its validation and analysis tools, assess the findings, and identify improvements.

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

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install better-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills.

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 better-skill-review

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/psylch/better-skills/better-skill-review/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/psylch/better-skills/better-skill-review)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/psylch/better-skills/better-skill-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/psylch/better-skills/better-skill-review/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 better-skill-review

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/psylch/better-skills/better-skill-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/psylch/better-skills/better-skill-review.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 133 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,643 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 $0.00133 $0.01643
Opus 5 $0.00067 $0.00822
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00329
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00164

Measured 12d ago against content hash ec52f70e99f1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

better-skill-review 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 12d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/analyze.sh, scripts/validate.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.

skills/better-skill-review/SKILL.md · 173 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 173 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Skill Review

Language

Match user's language: Respond in the same language the user uses.

Overview

Review an agent skill through three layers: automated linting (hard rules), contextual finding evaluation (agent judges with context), and structured semantic review (deep analysis against best practices). Optionally fix issues and verify fixes through independent subagent validation.

Workflow

Progress:

  • Step 1: Identify the skill
  • Step 2: Review (linting + profile + findings + semantic)
  • Step 3: Present findings
  • Step 4: Fix gate
  • Step 5: Verify & iterate

Step 1: Identify the Skill

Accept the skill location as a directory path containing SKILL.md. Auto-detect if the current working directory contains one.

Step 2: Review

Run both tools, then evaluate.

2a. Automated linting:

python3 {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/validate.py run --path <skill-path>

Output: checks (hard-rule verdicts → linter grade) + findings (soft detections needing judgment).

2b. Profile extraction:

bash {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/analyze.sh analyze <skill-path>

Note skill level (l0/l0plus/l1) and feature flags.

2c. Contextual findings review:

Judge each finding using its context_hint. See references/semantic_dimensions.md § Finding Judgment Table for decision criteria. Promote real issues to warnings; dismiss the rest with a brief note.

2d. Semantic review:

Read the skill's SKILL.md fully, then score each dimension (0-3). Read references/semantic_dimensions.md for the full checklist per dimension:

Dimension What it evaluates
5.1 Description Quality Trigger phrases, length, voice, specificity
5.2 Workflow Design Steps, decision points, SKILL.md length
5.3 Runtime Robustness Preflight, degradation, troubleshooting (L0+/L1 only)
5.4 Script Quality JSON output, error handling, exit codes (scripts only)
5.5 UX Practices Language, checklist, completion report (applicability matrix)
5.6 Setup Flow Integrity Bootstrap safety, live validation, credential security

Read the full file on GitHub · 173 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. 12d ago First seen · 173 lines · 133 tokens per session scan A ec52f70e99f1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

better-skill-review is a skill published in the GitHub repository psylch/better-skills (5 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 133 tokens to every session and 1,643 once invoked, about $0.0007 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.