Intent Clarity

Intent Clarity is a skill for Claude Code from ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts. It costs 123 tokens per session (1,535 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reasoning skill for working out the user's real goal when a request is vague, underspecified, or focused on a likely symptom. It uses the available context to choose a sensible interpretation and asks only when the cost of guessing is high.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it at the start of larger tasks, when references are unclear, when a proposed fix may not address the underlying problem, or before asking a clarifying question.
Why use it?
Short requests such as “fix it” or “make it faster” can lead to the wrong change if taken literally. This skill helps connect the requested action to the outcome the user probably needs.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/.

Good fit Use it at the start of larger tasks, when references are unclear, when a proposed fix may not address the underlying problem, or before asking a clarifying question.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts/intent-clarity
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 ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts --skill intent-clarity
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts

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 Intent Clarity

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts/intent-clarity/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts/intent-clarity)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts/intent-clarity"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts/intent-clarity/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 Intent Clarity

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts/intent-clarity"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts/intent-clarity.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 123 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,535 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 $0.00123 $0.01535
Opus 5 $0.00062 $0.00767
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00307
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00153

Measured 12d ago against content hash ed72b25e62d8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Intent Clarity 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.

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.

.claude/skills/intent-clarity/SKILL.md · 94 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 94 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Intent Clarity

Purpose

Serve the mission, not just the sentence. Users compress their intent into short requests; the literal words are a lossy encoding of what they actually need. Misreading intent produces work that is technically responsive and practically useless. But the fix is not to interrogate the user — it's to reconstruct intent from available evidence and proceed, asking only when a wrong guess would be expensive.

When to use this skill

  • At the start of any task big enough to plan (plan-gate Depth 1+).
  • The request contains vague referents ("this", "it", "better", "cleaner") or an unusual constraint you don't understand.
  • The literal request seems like a symptom-fix ("increase the timeout") where the mission is probably deeper ("make this stop failing").
  • You're about to ask a clarifying question — run the lazy-question check below first.

When NOT to use this skill

  • The request is fully specified and unambiguous. Don't manufacture hidden depths in "fix the typo in line 12".
  • Mid-task re-litigation: once you've stated an interpretation and the user hasn't objected, don't keep reopening it.

Operating procedure

Step 1 — Separate the two layers:

  • Literal request: what the words say to do.
  • Mission: why they want it — what outcome makes them say "yes, that's it."

Step 2 — Reconstruct constraints from evidence, in this order: explicit statements → the material they provided (its style, format, audience) → the context of the conversation → common sense for the task type. Typical inferable constraints: audience, tone, length, deadline pressure (quick draft vs. polished), compatibility with existing work, appetite for changes beyond the ask.

Step 3 — Find the divergence, if any. Ask: "If I did exactly the literal thing, is there a plausible way the user would still be unhappy?" If no — proceed. If yes — that gap is the ambiguity that matters.

Step 4 — Decide: proceed or ask.

Situation Action
Ambiguity exists but any reasonable reading leads to similar work Proceed; note the reading in one line
One reading is clearly most probable Proceed on it; state it: "Interpreting 'clean up' as X — flag me if you meant Y"
Readings diverge sharply AND wrong guess wastes major work or is hard to undo Ask — one question, the one that forks the work
The user clearly wants momentum (quick, informal, "just...") Proceed. A best-effort draft beats a questionnaire

Read the full file on GitHub · 94 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. 12d ago First seen · 94 lines · 123 tokens per session scan A ed72b25e62d8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Intent Clarity is a skill published in the GitHub repository ralfyishere/rules-with-receipts (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 123 tokens to every session and 1,535 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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