scott-adams

scott-adams is a skill for Claude Code from surendranb/writing-skills. It costs 49 tokens per session (771 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing guide based on Scott Adams’ business-writing method. It focuses on short sentences, clear wording, strong openings, and removing unnecessary words.

In plain words
What is it for?
Simplifying prose, cutting filler, creating curiosity-driven openings, and organising ideas for easier reading.
Why use it?
It helps turn dense or weak prose into writing that readers can understand quickly. It provides rules for making the main idea easier to follow.

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 Simplifying prose, cutting filler, creating curiosity-driven openings, and organising ideas for easier reading.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/surendranb/writing-skills/scott-adams
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 scott-adams
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 scott-adams

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/scott-adams"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/surendranb/writing-skills/scott-adams.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 771 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 $0.00771
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00385
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00154
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00077

Measured 11d ago against content hash ad7aeaf4e55f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

scott-adams 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 11d 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/scott-adams/SKILL.md · 54 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 54 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Scott Adams' Business Writing Method

Simplicity is persuasion. Prune unnecessary words, hook readers instantly, and write short sentences matched to how human brains process ideas.

The core rule

Simplicity equals persuasion. Cut extra words, write a high-curiosity opening hook, keep sentences short, and put the actor before the action.

Workflow: craft a high-curiosity hookprune all filler and adverbswrite short sentences (one thought per sentence)order subject before action.

Mechanics

  1. Prune extra words. Delete filler words (e.g., "very", "really", "quite"). If removing a word doesn't change the meaning, delete it.
  2. Humor equals precise word choice. Use specific, punchy verbs and nouns instead of generic verbs modified by adverbs (e.g., "swill" instead of "drink a lot").
  3. The curiosity hook. The first sentence creates an information gap: the reader knows something valuable is coming but cannot see it, so they must read on to close the gap. Adams' own opener did this: "I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in 'business writing.'" (Which course? What did it teach?) Build the gap by promising a payoff, stating a surprising claim, or ending the sentence just before the answer. Adams rewrote that first sentence "a dozen times" until it made the reader curious. Test: if the reader can stop after sentence one, it is not a hook.
  4. One thought per sentence. Keep sentences short. Never bundle multiple complex ideas into a single sentence. Readers comprehend simpler chunks faster.
  5. Actor before action. Sequence sentences so the subject (actor) appears before the verb (action). Human brains process "the boy hit the ball" faster than "the ball was hit by the boy."
  6. No complex nesting. Avoid subordinate clauses that delay the core subject-verb relationship.

Verify

  • First sentence opens an information gap — reader cannot stop after it
  • Zero unnecessary filler words or intensifiers ("very", "really")
  • Sentences average under 15 words and contain only one thought
  • Subject precedes the verb in active, direct voice
  • No complex or passive sentence constructions

Read the full file on GitHub · 54 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. 11d ago First seen · 54 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A ad7aeaf4e55f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

scott-adams is a skill published in the GitHub repository surendranb/writing-skills (33 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 771 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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