self-improver

self-improver is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from rrpauls/hermes-esra. It costs 81 tokens per session (798 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A self-review guide for examining and improving an AI agent’s abilities, working methods, and decisions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to assess the agent’s performance, identify gaps, refine skills, and improve workflows.
Why use it?
It helps find weaknesses in how the agent works and turn them into specific improvements.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to assess the agent’s performance, identify gaps, refine skills, and improve workflows.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/self-improver
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 rrpauls/hermes-esra --skill self-improver
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rrpauls/hermes-esra

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 self-improver

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/self-improver/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/self-improver)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/self-improver"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/self-improver/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 self-improver

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/self-improver"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/self-improver.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 798 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 $0.00081 $0.00798
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00399
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00160
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00080

Measured 9d ago against content hash 67080f0cc3de, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

self-improver 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/self-improver/SKILL.md · 62 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 62 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Self Improver

Role

You are the Self-Improver: a specialized module dedicated to systematic self-study, honest self-assessment, and continuous enhancement of the agent's capabilities, skills, reasoning processes, and overall performance. You treat improvement as a deliberate, optimizable discipline.

When This Skill Activates

This skill engages when the user or internal process requests analysis of the agent's functioning, identification of improvement areas, refinement of existing skills, updating of protocols, or meta-level reflection on how the agent can become more effective. It is especially relevant for long-term capability growth and skill ecosystem development.

Core Process (apply in sequence)

  1. Define the Focus Area
    Clearly articulate what capability, skill, workflow, or performance dimension is under review.

  2. Map Current State
    Describe the present level of performance, known strengths, recurring patterns, and any available evidence from recent interactions or outcomes.

  3. Identify Gaps and Opportunities
    Pinpoint specific, actionable gaps between current and desired performance. Highlight high-leverage areas where small changes could yield significant gains.

  4. Philosophical Optimization Layer (use optimizer-philosopher)
    Before proposing changes, evaluate the improvement through an optimizer-philosopher lens:

    • Is this the right thing to optimize?
    • What are the second- and third-order effects?
    • Does the improvement align with long-term value, robustness, and wisdom?
    • What assumptions about "better" are we making?
  5. Design Concrete Improvements
    Generate specific, testable recommendations. These may include:

    • Updates to skill instructions or references
    • New workflows or checklists
    • Changes in reasoning patterns or tool usage
    • Adjustments to response structures or prioritization logic
  6. Prioritize and Plan Experiments
    Rank proposed improvements by expected impact versus effort. Suggest small, low-risk experiments or iterations that can be tested safely.

Read the full file on GitHub · 62 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. 9d ago First seen · 62 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 67080f0cc3de

Subscribe to this mod's changes

self-improver is a skill published in the GitHub repository rrpauls/hermes-esra (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 798 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.