improve

An iterative code-quality improvement loop that scores a target against a written rubric, fixes its weakest area, and checks the result.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to improve a project or other target using a rubric, either for a set number of rounds or until improvement stops.
Why use it?
It replaces an informal improvement process with repeated scoring and focused work until progress levels off or the target meets the required scores.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the Citadel plugin — 48 skills, 7 agents, 2 MCP servers 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/sethgammon/citadel/improve
Any agent
npx skills add SethGammon/Citadel --skill improve
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SethGammon/Citadel

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install Citadel, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 48 skills, 7 agents, 2 MCP servers.

Per session 48 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,228 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 $0.00048 $0.04228
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.02114
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00846
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00423

Measured 3d ago against content hash ae411ed3352d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

improve 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 3d 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/improve/SKILL.md · 295 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 295 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/improve — Autonomous Quality Engine

Orientation

Use when: Scoring a target against a rubric and iteratively improving it. Rubric required at .planning/rubrics/{target}.md (Phase 0 creates one if missing).

Don't use when: Refactoring without a rubric (use /refactor), one-time code review (use /review), or debugging a specific bug (use /systematic-debugging).

Invocation

/improve {target}            # Loop until plateau or all axes >= 8.0
/improve {target} --n=3      # Run exactly N loops then stop
/improve {target} --axis={name}  # Force-attack a specific axis (skips scoring)
/improve {target} --score-only   # Score and report, no attack
/improve {target} --continue     # Resume from campaign state (used by daemon)
/improve citadel             # Targets Citadel itself

target is a slug that maps to .planning/rubrics/{target}.md. If no rubric exists, run Phase 0 first.

Campaign Mode

When invoked with --n or --continue, improve operates in campaign mode and maintains a campaign file that daemon can attach to.

Campaign file: .planning/campaigns/improve-{target}.md, created automatically on the first invocation with --n (full template: docs/QUALITY_LOOPS.md#campaign-file-template). Frontmatter: version, id (improve-{target}-{ISO-date-slug}), status: active, type: improve, target, total_loops ({n} or unlimited), completed_loops: 0, current_level (from rubric frontmatter), estimated_cost_per_loop: 12, started. Body: status and direction lines, a Loop History table (Loop | Axis Attacked | Outcome | Score Movement), and a Continuation State block (next_loop, last_scorecard_log, last_outcome, phase_within_loop, level_up_triggered).

Campaign lifecycle

Update phase_within_loop at each phase: scoringselected-{axis}attacking-{axis}verifyingnot-started.

On loop complete: increment completed_loops, update next_loop/last_scorecard_log/last_outcome, append Loop History row.

Read the full file on GitHub · 295 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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. 3d ago First seen · 295 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A ae411ed3352d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

improve is a skill published in the GitHub repository SethGammon/Citadel (914 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 4,228 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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