optimize-agent-instructions

optimize-agent-instructions is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from richfrem/agent-plugins-skills. It costs 130 tokens per session (2,189 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An instruction-file auditor and rewriting guide for AI coding assistants. It reviews files such as CLAUDE.md, GEMINI.md, and GitHub Copilot instructions so they give clear, project-specific guidance.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review or create assistant instruction files, preserve project rules, and make those files concise and authoritative.
Why use it?
It removes outdated, unrelated, duplicated, or unclear rules that can cause an AI assistant to behave inconsistently. It also checks whether instruction files exist for the platforms the project uses.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the agent-agentic-os plugin — 20 skills, 4 commands, 2 agents, 3 hooks shipped together

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/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/optimize-agent-instructions
Any agent
npx skills add richfrem/agent-plugins-skills --skill optimize-agent-instructions
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install agent-agentic-os, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 20 skills, 4 commands, 2 agents, 3 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 optimize-agent-instructions

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/optimize-agent-instructions.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/optimize-agent-instructions)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/optimize-agent-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/optimize-agent-instructions.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 130 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,189 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 $0.00130 $0.02189
Opus 5 $0.00065 $0.01094
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00438
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00219

Measured 5d ago against content hash 93c7de012956, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

optimize-agent-instructions 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 5d 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.

plugins/agent-agentic-os/skills/optimize-agent-instructions/SKILL.md · 258 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 258 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

optimize-agent-instructions

Audits and rewrites the AI agent instruction files in a repo. Works on any project — not just agent-plugins-skills. The goal is files that are authoritative, concise, and guide AI behavior through explicit principles rather than hoping for defaults.


Phase 1 — Discovery

Run these checks silently before asking anything:

1. Which instruction files exist?

ls CLAUDE.md GEMINI.md .github/copilot-instructions.md 2>/dev/null

2. Ask the user:

  • What platform(s) they use (Claude Code, Copilot, Gemini CLI) — determines which files to touch
  • Any project-specific rules to preserve (coding standards, ADRs, naming conventions)

If instruction files are missing for active platforms, offer to create them.


Phase 2 — Audit Each File

Read each file, then score it against the Quality Checklist:

Quality Checklist

Structure

  • Merges Karpathy's behavioral guidelines with project-specific instructions as needed
  • No stale AI-session artifacts ("Would you like X configured?", "Here is a summary of...")
  • No foreign rules from other projects (spec-kitty constitution, unrelated frameworks)
  • No self-referential framing ("this file reproduces CLAUDE.md...", "this is a copy of...")
  • All paths and commands are current and correct
  • Platform-specific notes are present where relevant (Windows caveats, tool name mapping)

Read the full file on GitHub · 258 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 5d ago First seen · 258 lines · 130 tokens per session scan A 93c7de012956

Subscribe to this mod's changes

optimize-agent-instructions is a skill published in the GitHub repository richfrem/agent-plugins-skills (6 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 130 tokens to every session and 2,189 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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