write-readme

A guide for creating or updating a README.md, the main instruction and overview file commonly placed in a software project. It reads the project to document setup, configuration, tests, architecture, and contribution steps accurately.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a project or package needs a new README, an accurate setup guide, environment-variable documentation, test commands, or architecture notes.
Why use it?
It prevents README instructions from becoming incomplete, generic, or disconnected from the project’s actual files and commands.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/soulcodex/agentic/write-readme
Any agent
npx skills add soulcodex/agentic --skill write-readme
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/soulcodex/agentic

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 53 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 501 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 $0.00053 $0.00501
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00251
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00100
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00050

Measured 2d ago against content hash e02189f2cf69, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

write-readme 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 2d 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/documentation/write-readme/SKILL.md · 79 lines

What it actually says

Write README Skill

Generate or update the README.md for the current project or specified package.

Step 1 — Read the Project

Read:

  • package.json / go.mod / pyproject.toml / composer.json — for name, description, scripts
  • Main entry point — to understand what the code does
  • Existing .env.example — for environment variable documentation
  • Existing README (if any) — to preserve information that cannot be inferred from code

Step 2 — Draft the README

Include these sections in order:

# {project-name}

{One to three sentence description of what this is and why it exists}

## Requirements

{Runtime, language version, any system dependencies}

## Getting Started

{Exact commands to clone, install dependencies, configure, and run}

## Configuration

{Table of environment variables from .env.example: name, required/optional, description, default}

## Running Tests

{Exact command(s) to run the test suite}

## Architecture

{Optional: 2-4 sentences on the key design decisions. Link to docs/adr/ if it exists.}

## Contributing

{How to contribute: branch naming, PR process, running checks locally}

Only include a section if there is real content for it. Do not include placeholder text.

Step 3 — Accuracy Check

Every command in the README must be verified to actually work. If you cannot verify a command because the environment is unavailable, mark it with # verify this command comment.

Step 4 — Write the File

Write (or overwrite) README.md at the project root. If updating, preserve sections that contain manually curated content (e.g., architecture notes, contributing guidelines) and only regenerate sections derived from code.

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. 2d ago First seen · 79 lines · 53 tokens per session scan A e02189f2cf69

Subscribe to this mod's changes

write-readme is a skill published in the GitHub repository soulcodex/agentic (10 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 53 tokens to every session and 501 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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