env-bootstrap

env-bootstrap is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer. It costs 133 tokens per session (2,300 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A repository setup guide for getting an unfamiliar codebase to build, test, and run on a restricted machine. It uses the project's CI configuration and pinned tool versions as the source of truth.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when joining a repository, onboarding a machine, or diagnosing local build and test failures. It helps configure tool versions, registries, proxies, services, and a repeatable working environment.
Why use it?
It removes the guesswork behind missing tools, private package access, required services, and undocumented workarounds. It also records the fixes so future engineers do not repeat the same investigation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the fde-core plugin — 30 skills 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/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/env-bootstrap
Any agent
npx skills add rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer --skill env-bootstrap
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install fde-core, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 30 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 env-bootstrap

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/env-bootstrap.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/env-bootstrap)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/env-bootstrap"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer/env-bootstrap.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 2,300 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 $0.00133 $0.02300
Opus 5 $0.00067 $0.01150
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00460
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00230

Measured 5d ago against content hash 1419085be311, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

env-bootstrap 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.

fde-core/skills/env-bootstrap/SKILL.md · 201 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 201 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Environment bootstrap

Getting to a green build in someone else's repository.

Why this exists

You cannot map, change, or verify a system you cannot run. Bootstrap is therefore the first hard gate of an engagement, and in enterprise environments it routinely eats two or three days — not because it's difficult, but because the knowledge is distributed: a version pin in one file, a registry credential in someone's shell profile, a service dependency nobody documented, and a workaround that exists only in a senior engineer's muscle memory.

The second reason this skill exists is durability. Every FDE who bootstraps a repo discovers the same six workarounds and writes down none of them. 01-environment.md is how that stops.

When this applies

  • First day in a repository
  • Build or tests fail locally and the cause isn't obvious
  • "It works on my machine"
  • Onboarding docs are missing, stale, or wrong

When it doesn't

  • The build already works and you can run the tests
  • You only need to read code, not run it — repo-recon doesn't require a working build
  • The failure is in CI rather than locally — that's ci-forensics

Prerequisites

Locate the workspace (FDE_WORKSPACE, else the charter Location, else .fde/, else ../<repo>-fde/ — see ../_shared/workspace-conventions.md). Read 00-engagement.md. Check 00b-access.md too — a missing registry credential is an access problem wearing a build problem's clothes, and diagnosing it as the latter wastes a day.

Procedure

1. Read the CI config before anything else

The highest-value step, and the one most people skip in favour of guessing at a build command.

CI configuration is the only executable statement of how this software is actually built that has to work every day. A README records what was true when someone last cared; CI is verified continuously.

Find the real build workflow using the triage in ../_shared/stack-detection.md — mature repositories accumulate twenty automation workflows around one that builds. From it, extract:

Read the full file on GitHub · 201 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. 5d ago First seen · 201 lines · 133 tokens per session scan A 1419085be311

Subscribe to this mod's changes

env-bootstrap is a skill published in the GitHub repository rpraharaj/forward-deployed-engineer (6 stars, last pushed 18d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 133 tokens to every session and 2,300 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.

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