Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to richardwooding/file-search-on. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/richardwooding/file-search-on/main/.claude/skills/skill-authoring/SKILL.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/richardwooding/file-search-onWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/richardwooding/file-search-on/skill-authoring)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/richardwooding/file-search-on/skill-authoring"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/richardwooding/file-search-on/skill-authoring/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/richardwooding/file-search-on/skill-authoring"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/richardwooding/file-search-on/skill-authoring.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00071 | $0.01253 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00028 | $0.00501 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00014 | $0.00251 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00125 |
Grade A, and why
skill-authoring 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 2mo 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.
This is a copy
100% identical to skill-authoring — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 97 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Skill Authoring
This skill codifies the authoring discipline so every skill loads cheaply and triggers accurately.
Why progressive disclosure
An agent skill is a folder with SKILL.md at its root. The agent loads content across three levels — each step costs
more context, so keep lower levels lean.
| Level | When loaded | Budget | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Metadata | Always, at startup | ~100 tokens per skill | name + description from frontmatter |
| 2. Instructions | When the skill triggers | <5,000 tokens (≤500 lines) | SKILL.md body |
| 3. Resources | On demand, via explicit links or script execution | Effectively unlimited | references/, scripts/, assets/ |
Scripts are especially efficient: the source never enters context — only the output does.
Authoring a new skill
- Copy the template. Copy
templates/SKILL.md.tmplfrom this skill into your new skill's folder asSKILL.md, then fill it in. Place the skill wherever skills live in the current repo (e.g.skills/<your-skill>/). - Write the description first. Third person, include what the skill does AND when to use it. See templates/description-examples.md for good vs bad examples.
- Draft 3 evaluation scenarios before prose. Capture concrete prompts the skill should handle (and ones it should decline), alongside the expected behaviour. Real failures drive what you document — this keeps the skill lean.
- Write the minimum SKILL.md needed to pass the evals. Resist documenting edge cases you haven't seen fail.
- Split early if content grows. See references/patterns.md for the four split patterns.
- Lint before committing. Run the linter from this skill against your new skill directory — see the Resources section below for the exact script path.
- Walk the review checklist. See references/review-checklist.md.
What ships with it
5 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.
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.
- 2mo ago First seen · 97 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A edb4e022740e
skill-authoring is a skill published in the GitHub repository richardwooding/file-search-on (5 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 1,253 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to skill-authoring, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.
skill-authoring compared with skills from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| skill-authoringrichardwooding/file-search-on | Skill | 5 | 4d ago | MIT | A | 71 | Claude Code |
| dd-code-generationDataDog/pup | Skill | 1.0k | yesterday | Apache-2.0 | A | 16 | Claude Code |
| goericrisco/rsc-harness | Skill | 503 | 2d ago | MIT | A | 86 | Claude Code, Codex |
| write-zot-themespatriceckhart/zot | Skill | 359 | yesterday | MIT | A | 23 | Claude Code, Codex |
| gographozgurcd/gograph | Skill | 231 | yesterday | MIT | A | 69 | Claude Code |
| bubbletea-testingdimetron/pi-go | Skill | 222 | 3d ago | MIT | A | 139 | Claude Code, Codex |
| pi-loop-forensicsdimetron/pi-go | Skill | 222 | 3d ago | MIT | A | 65 | Claude Code, Codex |