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.
npx skills add tamdogood/builder-essential-skills --skill code-standardsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tamdogood/builder-essential-skillsWrote 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/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/code-standards)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/code-standards"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/code-standards/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/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/code-standards"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/code-standards.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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 | $0.00094 | $0.00698 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00038 | $0.00279 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00019 | $0.00140 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00070 |
Grade A, and why
code-standards 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 1mo 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 — 52 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Code standards — the change workflow
You are making a code change. This skill is the execution order; it is
stack-agnostic. Adapt every command to the project's actual toolchain: read the
project's own docs (README, CONTRIBUTING, AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md, a Makefile or
package scripts) once to learn its build, test, lint, and format commands before
you start.
Steps
- Orient. Read any project lessons/gotchas file (e.g.
tasks/lessons.md) and obey it. Find and read the one doc for the subsystem you're changing, not the whole tree. - Plan if non-trivial (3+ steps or an architectural choice): short plan in
tasks/todo.md— files touched, tests to add, risks. Going sideways → stop and re-plan. - Baseline: get the project's build + test command green before touching anything. A pre-existing red is the first task; never build on top of a broken baseline.
- Implement the smallest root-cause change. Hand-match the surrounding style. Don't run a mass auto-formatter on files you touch; it buries your real diff in noise.
- Test: new behavior gets a test that fails without the change; security gates get negative-assertion tests (wrong token → denied, state unchanged, no data leak).
- Verify: run the full check suite (build + lint + type-check + tests) until green before you call it "done".
- Self-review your own diff as if it were someone else's PR (or invoke a review skill). Fix findings before presenting.
- Close out: update docs in the same change; append to a lessons file if you were
corrected or surprised; write a conventional commit message (
feat|fix|docs(scope): …).
Tripwires — stop and re-check the project's guidelines when you're about to…
- change a public or shared interface (API, wire format, schema) → check every caller; prefer additive changes
- add a dependency → weigh transitive weight and licenses, and whether the stdlib already covers it
- touch auth, tokens, or permissions → audit every writer and reader path, add negative tests
- write a secret to disk → use the platform's atomic create-private API, never write-then-chmod
- hold a lock across an
await/blocking call, or read env inside logic → extract a pure decision function
What ships with it
1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 52 lines · 94 tokens per session scan A 29928a2f9598
code-standards is a skill published in the GitHub repository tamdogood/builder-essential-skills (225 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 94 tokens to every session and 698 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
codex-ab
Run an A/B codex review experiment — holistic codex review vs 3 focused dimension passes (security, ecto, liveview) on the branch diff, classify findings, report a panel-value verdict. Use when the branch is fresh, before any codex review runs.
architecture-compass
Architectural thinking partner for an existing repository — scans the codebase, conducts a structured interview, agrees on current architectural state and recommended direction, and produces a shareable insights document. Scoped to one repository, module, or folder. Does not execute transformation — it orients. Use…
review-refiner
Facilitate a structured conversation to customize how the review molecule works -- atom loading rules, severity classification, report format, scope rules, insight capture, and health logging. Produces a formal review-standards.md document that the review molecule will use as its process configuration. Use when the…
review
Perform a structured code review by composing validation checklists from relevant atoms based on what code changed. Loads atoms conditionally -- clean-code always, architecture/DDD/security/tests only when the delta touches their domain. Produces a severity-ordered report with specific locations and fixes. Use when…
codex-loop
Fix Elixir/Phoenix code until Codex CLI review comes back clean — bounded review, fix, verify loop before opening a PR. Use when codex is installed and you want an external cross-model critic on your changes before pushing.
spike-consumer-adversarial
OI-3 spike harness — heavy consumer, ADVERSARIAL arm. Worst-case early-exit test: the mid-workflow Skill call has no continuation guardrail and the guidance skill ends with a final-sounding anchor. Use only when explicitly invoked by the spike harness with a TRIALID and data path.