init-verification

init-verification is a skill for Claude Code from Redtropig/harness-anchor. It costs 37 tokens per session (1,546 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A startup health check for a coding project. It runs the project's init.sh script to confirm that required tools, files, and settings are ready.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it at the start of a session, after changing branches, dependencies, or system tools, when a working command fails, and before declaring work complete.
Why use it?
It prevents coding from starting in a broken or changed environment. If a check fails, work stops until the reported problem is fixed.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions AGENTS.md.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the harness-anchor plugin — 14 skills, 9 commands, 5 agents, 5 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it at the start of a session, after changing branches, dependencies, or system tools, when a working command fails, and before declaring work complete.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add Redtropig/harness-anchor
Claude Code
/plugin install harness-anchor

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install harness-anchor, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 14 skills, 9 commands, 5 agents, 5 hooks.

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 init-verification

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redtropig/harness-anchor/init-verification/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/redtropig/harness-anchor/init-verification)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/redtropig/harness-anchor/init-verification"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redtropig/harness-anchor/init-verification/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 init-verification

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/redtropig/harness-anchor/init-verification"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redtropig/harness-anchor/init-verification.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,546 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 $0.00037 $0.01546
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00773
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00309
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00155

Measured 9d ago against content hash 10f0ccdf4ffc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

init-verification 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 9d 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.

skills/init-verification/SKILL.md · 129 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 129 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Init Verification

Before writing any code, prove the environment is healthy. Anthropic's Nov 2025 harness guidance: the initializer agent runs init.sh, then the coding agent picks up — health is verified BEFORE work begins.

When to invoke

  • First action of every fresh session
  • After git checkout to a different branch
  • After dependency changes (package.json / Cargo.toml / etc. modified)
  • After OS / toolchain updates
  • When a previously-working command suddenly fails
  • Before claiming a feature done (re-verify in case of drift)

Procedure

  1. Locate init.sh in project root.

    • Missing → tell the user to run /anchor to scaffold one. Do not proceed.
  2. Run it.

    bash init.sh
    

    Capture stdout+stderr.

  3. Interpret exit code.

    Exit Meaning Action
    0 All checks passed Proceed with work
    1 One or more checks failed Stop. Fix the reported issues before doing anything else.
    other Unexpected Read output; either fix init.sh itself or report to user
  4. On failure: list the specific missing files/tools, propose fixes one at a time:

    • Missing tool (e.g. cmake not found) → suggest install command appropriate to platform (brew install cmake on macOS)
    • Missing state file (e.g. feature_list.json missing) → suggest /anchor
    • Missing build artifact (e.g. compile_commands.json missing) → suggest correct configure command
  5. After fix: re-run init.sh. Repeat until exit 0. Then continue work.

  6. Re-check inherited NEGATIVE capability conclusions.

    A line in AGENTS.md shaped like searched <scope>, not found (as of <date>) records what a past session observed. It is not a current fact. Re-check each one. This step, by construction, only ever re-checks conclusions already recorded as absent, so it always takes the discovery chain's NOT_FOUND path — the slower, full-ladder search, not the fast PATH hit — and that path measures ~1.6s for two tools (51-entry PATH):

Read the full file on GitHub · 129 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. 9d ago First seen · 129 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 10f0ccdf4ffc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

init-verification is a skill published in the GitHub repository Redtropig/harness-anchor (13 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 1,546 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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