bob-ross

bob-ross is a skill for Claude Code from surendranb/writing-skills. It costs 49 tokens per session (773 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing guide that produces calm, gentle instructions in the style associated with Bob Ross, the American painter and television host.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps write encouraging tutorials, explanations, and guidance that acknowledge errors, reframe them positively, and offer a simple next action.
Why use it?
It gives nervous readers a reassuring way to handle mistakes and continue step by step.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the writing-skills plugin — 17 skills shipped together

Good fit It helps write encouraging tutorials, explanations, and guidance that acknowledge errors, reframe them positively, and offer a simple next action.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/surendranb/writing-skills/bob-ross
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 surendranb/writing-skills --skill bob-ross
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/surendranb/writing-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install writing-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills.

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 bob-ross

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/bob-ross/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/bob-ross)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/bob-ross"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/bob-ross/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 bob-ross

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/bob-ross"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/bob-ross.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 773 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 $0.00049 $0.00773
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00387
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00155
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00077

Measured 12d ago against content hash e05c710d7c41, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bob-ross 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 12d 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/bob-ross/SKILL.md · 50 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 50 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Bob Ross Voice

Serene encouragement. Mistake = gift. Gentle instruction for a nervous room.

The core rule

Reframe every mistake as a happy little accident, and walk the reader forward with a calm, kind cadence. The voice's power: it never lets a flaw be final. Nothing is ruined — something is just being discovered. Anxiety dissolves because the instructor is unflappable.

Workflow: acknowledge the wobble calmly ("it happens")reframe it as an opportunity ("happy little accident")show the fix as a simple next strokeremind them it's their work and it's good.

Mechanics

  1. Reading the reader's shoulder. Address the worry before it's said: "I know you think that's ruining it. It isn't."
  2. Mistake-to-gift pipeline. Every error gets a name ("happy little accident," "a chance for a friend to join the painting") — the reframe is specific, not generic positivity.
  3. Stepwise calm. One instruction at a time, delivered as if there is all the time in the world. Never "next, quickly."
  4. Self-soothing cadence. Slow, slightly repetitive rhythm; short sentences; encouraging tags ("and that's fine," "just let it do its thing").
  5. Ownership with approval. "It's your world... you can make it do anything you want" — but said with total confidence the reader's choices are good ones.
  6. The verbs are light touches. "Tap, tap, tap." Actions described as gentle motions.

Verify

  • Every flaw is reframed with a specific name, never generic positivity
  • No urgency words (quickly, ASAP, immediately, now)
  • One instruction at a time, in order
  • Each encouragement anchors to something concrete in the work

Do not

  • Let urgency leak in — no rushing, no alarm
  • Reframe a real problem away; the mistake must be genuinely non-fatal, or acknowledge it plainly first
  • Stack empty positivity ("great job amazing work"); anchor every encouragement in something concrete

Example transformations

Neutral: "Your first draft needs revision. Keep the good parts and rewrite the rest."

Read the full file on GitHub · 50 lines

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. 12d ago First seen · 50 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A e05c710d7c41

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bob-ross is a skill published in the GitHub repository surendranb/writing-skills (34 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 773 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

domscribe

Work with Domscribe — the pixel-to-code bridge. Use when setting up, initializing, or configuring Domscribe for a project, OR when editing or modifying UI components (React, Vue, Next.js, Nuxt), implementing features from captured UI annotations, querying runtime context for source locations, exploring component…

patchorbit/domscribe · 94 tokens

forge-connector

Guides building and deploying Atlassian Forge Teamwork Graph connector apps that ingest external data into Atlassian's Teamwork Graph, making it searchable in Rovo Search and surfaced in Rovo Chat. Use when the user wants to build a Forge connector, ingest external data into Atlassian, connect a third-party tool (e.g.…

atlassian/forge-skills · 121 tokens

forge-cost-optimizer

Optimizes Atlassian Forge apps to reduce platform consumption and avoid unnecessary costs using Atlassian's "Optimise Forge platform costs" guidance. Use when the user asks to optimize Forge app costs, reduce Forge invocations, lower GB-seconds, reduce storage or log usage, tune memory, replace polling, improve…

atlassian/forge-skills · 137 tokens

forge-app-review

Performs a lightweight pre-release readiness review of Atlassian Forge apps across manifest/module wiring, architecture, runtime compatibility, dependency posture, tests, deploy readiness, and obvious security, cost, or reliability smells. Use when the user asks "review my Forge app", "pre-deploy check", "is this app…

atlassian/forge-skills · 134 tokens

logic-review

Find logic bugs in a single file or function via semi-formal execution tracing (Premises → Trace → Divergence → Trigger → Remedy). Trigger when a user shares code and suspects something is wrong without naming a concrete failure — phrases like "review this", "does this look right", "check this function", "audit this…

hyhmrright/logic-lens · 161 tokens

logic-health

Sweep a directory, module, or full codebase for logic correctness and produce a scored health dashboard with systemic patterns. Trigger when the user requests a health view — "audit the whole codebase", "health check", "health overview", "logic health overview", "audit src/", "audit auth and payments modules", "where…

hyhmrright/logic-lens · 180 tokens