Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to starling-browser/starling. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/starling-browser/starling/main/.agents/skills/writing-style/SKILL.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/starling-browser/starlingWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/starling-browser/starling/writing-style)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/starling-browser/starling/writing-style"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/starling-browser/starling/writing-style/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/starling-browser/starling/writing-style"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/starling-browser/starling/writing-style.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00185 | $0.00893 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00093 | $0.00447 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00037 | $0.00179 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00018 | $0.00089 |
Grade A, and why
writing-style 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Writing style
Apply these rules to every paragraph of prose authored in this project.
Rules
- Fifth-grade reading level where possible. Short sentences. Common words. Grammatically correct. Prefer "uses" over "leverages", "checks" over "verifies", "real sites" over "real-world bundles".
- No unclear abbreviations. Spell out anything most readers won't
know on first use.
- Fine as-is in context: HTTP, TLS, DNS, URL, DOM, CSS, JSON, PR, CI, GUI, Test262, WPT (when context is clear), HTML, JS, MCP, OTEL, OTLP.
- Spell out or rephrase: TDZ, SSIM ("similarity score"), PSL ("Public Suffix List"), ALPN (drop or explain), HSTS (drop or "hardening"), GA/gtag ("Google Analytics"), VM ("virtual machine") on first use, GC ("garbage collector") on first use, BCL (".NET base class library").
- No semicolons unless truly necessary. A period almost always reads better. Exception: dense table cells where two clauses must share one row.
- No verbose explanations. If a sentence restates the previous one with different words, cut it. If a parenthetical is more than ~6 words, ask whether it earns its keep.
- Don't point out the obvious.
- Bad: "runs on every PR" (already in the CI config).
- Bad: "click the link to learn more" (the link does that).
- Bad: "these tests pin behavior" right after listing the tests.
- Bad: filler lead-ins like "These tests are author-written" that add no information.
- Never use the phrase "hand-written" — code comments, READMEs,
commit messages, anywhere. Name the Starling resource explicitly:
"the Starling JS engine", "Starling DOM", "Starling networking from
System.Net.Socketsup". Reads as marketing and obscures what we actually mean.
Workflow when invoked
- Before writing: scan the rules above.
- Draft the prose.
- Re-read each paragraph and check:
- Would a smart fifth grader understand this?
- Any semicolons I can replace with a period?
- Any abbreviation a first-time reader wouldn't know?
- Did I restate the previous sentence?
- Did I state something the reader can already see (link, code, filename)?
- Did I write "hand-written" anywhere?
- Cut, swap, simplify. Then save.
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.
- 9d ago First seen · 72 lines · 185 tokens per session scan A 3660b706cd77
writing-style is a skill published in the GitHub repository starling-browser/starling (57 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 185 tokens to every session and 893 once invoked, about $0.0009 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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