start

start is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from t0ddharris/claude-code-skills. It costs 38 tokens per session (819 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A session-start routine for a coding project that reads the previous session's notes, checks uncommitted changes and recent commits, and reports the current state.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it at the beginning of a new coding session to restore context, inspect repository status, and continue from the recorded next steps.
Why use it?
It reduces the time spent reconstructing what happened before and highlights work that may be unfinished or outdated.

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/t0ddharris/claude-code-skills/start
Any agent
npx skills add t0ddharris/claude-code-skills --skill start
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/t0ddharris/claude-code-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 start

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/t0ddharris/claude-code-skills/start.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/t0ddharris/claude-code-skills/start)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/t0ddharris/claude-code-skills/start"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/t0ddharris/claude-code-skills/start.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 819 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 5.1 $0.00038 $0.00819
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00409
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00164
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00082

Measured 5d ago against content hash c021631112e5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start 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 5d 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.

.agents/skills/start/SKILL.md · 73 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 73 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Session Start

Run this at the beginning of every new session. It gives you and the user a shared understanding of where things left off and what's in play.

Steps

1. Read the Session Brief

Read brief/session-brief.md in full. This is the primary source for what happened last session, what decisions were made, and what's still open.

2. Check Git Status

Run git status and git log --oneline -5 to see:

  • Any uncommitted changes from the last session
  • The most recent commits for context

2.5. Sync Skills to .agents/ (opt-in projects only)

If the project has an .agents/ directory, run the project-level sync from the sync-skills skill (hardlink .claude/skills/.agents/skills/). Do not prompt for scope — project only. Only mention it if something was added or removed.

If there is no .agents/ directory, skip silently — never create one. To opt a project in, run /sync-skills once manually and add .agents/ to its .gitignore.

3. Check the Date

Note the current date and compare it to the session brief date. If significant time has passed (more than a few days), flag it — some carryover items may be stale or already handled.

4. Deliver the Session Summary

Output a concise summary for the user with these sections:

## Session [N+1] — [Current Date]

### Last Session Recap
[2-3 sentence summary of what happened]

### Open Items
[Bulleted list of carryover tasks, prioritized by urgency/relevance]

### Uncommitted Changes
[List any uncommitted files, or "Clean working tree" if none]

### Ready when you are.

Keep it tight. The user has already read the brief if they want detail — this is the quick orientation.

5. Increment the Session Number

Note the new session number based on the brief's session number. When the user runs /brief at the end of this session, use the incremented number.

Rules

  • Do NOT modify any files during /start — this is read-only, except the skills sync (step 2.5)
  • Do NOT start working on carryover items automatically — wait for the user to direct
  • Do NOT push the user toward the next topic while they're still working through the current one — wait for them to signal they're ready to move on
  • If the brief is missing or empty, say so and ask the user what they'd like to work on
  • If there are uncommitted changes, mention them but don't commit — the user decides

Read the full file on GitHub · 73 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. 5d ago First seen · 73 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A c021631112e5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start is a skill published in the GitHub repository t0ddharris/claude-code-skills (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 819 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 2026-08-31.

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