Harness_Handbook: Skill for Codex

.agents/skills/build-codebase-handbook/SKILL.md

build-codebase-handbook is a skill for Codex from Ruhan-Wang/Harness_Handbook. It costs 155 tokens per session (1,885 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A source-location handbook for a software repository. It gives a coding agent a compact map of where changes are likely to belong.

In plain words
What is it for?
Creating, refreshing, checking, or using a repository map for coding tasks.
Why use it?
It reduces the time spent searching through unfamiliar code and helps keep planning, implementation, debugging, testing, and reviews focused.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions subagents; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents); mentions AGENTS.md.

This is Ruhan-Wang/Harness_Handbook's own configuration. It tells Codex how to work on Harness_Handbook itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything Harness_Handbook configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to Ruhan-Wang/Harness_Handbook. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Ruhan-Wang/Harness_Handbook/main/.agents/skills/build-codebase-handbook/SKILL.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Ruhan-Wang/Harness_Handbook

Made for: 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 build-codebase-handbook

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ruhan-wang/harness_handbook/build-codebase-handbook.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ruhan-wang/harness_handbook/build-codebase-handbook)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ruhan-wang/harness_handbook/build-codebase-handbook"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ruhan-wang/harness_handbook/build-codebase-handbook.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 155 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,885 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00155 $0.01885
Opus 5 $0.00077 $0.00942
Sonnet 5 $0.00031 $0.00377
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00188

Measured 8d ago against content hash b0949fecf4dd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

build-codebase-handbook 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 8d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 4 executable files (scripts/compile_coverage.py, scripts/inventory.py, scripts/package_skill.py, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

.agents/skills/build-codebase-handbook/SKILL.md · 211 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 211 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Build Codebase Handbook

Create or use a compact source-location index that helps Codex find every place a change touches. Use the active Codex session for analysis; do not call an LLM endpoint, API client, or API-backed generator.

Choose the workflow

Resolve this skill's directory from the selected SKILL.md and call it HANDBOOK_BUILDER_ROOT.

Choose one mode:

  • Task mode: Use an existing generated handbook to route a concrete planning, implementation, debugging, testing, explanation, or review task.
  • Build mode: Generate, refresh, or validate a handbook skill.
  • Combined mode: Build or refresh the handbook first, then use it for the task.

Do not generate a handbook merely because a normal coding task mentions a repository. Task mode requires an existing handbook or an explicit request to create/use one.

Use an existing handbook for a task

  1. Resolve the handbook named by the user or already selected by Codex. Otherwise inspect <source>/.agents/skills/*-handbook/SKILL.md, excluding this builder. If several match, choose by repository name and described scope; ask only when ambiguity would materially change the task.
  2. Read the generated handbook's SKILL.md completely. Read its references/overview.md, route through references/index.md, then load only the relevant stage pages and references/registers.md.
  3. Inspect references/coverage.json for freshness of the routed files. When useful, run this builder's validator. Treat validation failures as drift signals, not as permission to skip the user's task.
  4. Read the real source at every cited path and symbol. Search for callers, tests, configuration, and state readers/writers that may have changed since generation.
  5. Follow the user's requested action boundary:
    • For explanation, diagnosis, planning, or review, remain read-only.
    • For a requested change, implement it and verify it in proportion to risk.
    • For broad changes, use the handbook index and registers as a coverage checklist.
  6. If the task changes covered source, refresh the handbook only when the user asks to keep it synchronized or repository instructions require it. Otherwise report that its coverage hashes are now stale.

Read the full file on GitHub · 211 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 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. 8d ago First seen · 211 lines · 155 tokens per session scan A b0949fecf4dd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

build-codebase-handbook is a skill published in the GitHub repository Ruhan-Wang/Harness_Handbook (327 stars, last pushed 27d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 155 tokens to every session and 1,885 once invoked, about $0.0008 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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