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 create-skillgit 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/create-skill)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/create-skill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/create-skill.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.00086 | $0.01139 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00043 | $0.00570 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00017 | $0.00228 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00114 |
Grade A, and why
create-skill 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 — 66 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Create Skill
Turn a skill idea into a complete, discoverable, and shippable skill folder. Treat the skill instructions, metadata, artwork, README wiring, and validation as one deliverable.
Workflow
-
Orient the repository. Read
AGENTS.md, the rootREADME.md, the nearest existing skill with a similar purpose, and any local lessons file. Inspectpackage.json,skills.sh.json, the installer, and the existingassets/skill-cards/andassets/skill-banners/conventions before editing. -
Define the contract. Extract the skill slug, purpose, audience, trigger phrases, inputs, outputs, and acceptance checks from the request. Normalize the slug to lowercase hyphen-case. Preserve the user's terminology, but make the frontmatter description explicit about both the capability and the situations that should trigger it.
-
Choose the smallest useful structure. Create only the resources the skill needs:
skills/<slug>/SKILL.mdfor the core workflow and routing rules.skills/<slug>/agents/openai.yamlfor display metadata and an explicit$<slug>default prompt.skills/<slug>/references/for detailed domain guidance that should load progressively.skills/<slug>/scripts/only for deterministic, repeatable automation.skills/<slug>/assets/only for files the skill will reuse in its outputs.skills/<slug>/README.mdbecause this repository documents every published skill.
Keep
SKILL.mdunder 500 lines. Put deep specifications and long examples in one-level-deep references and link them directly from the skill. -
Write the skill. Use imperative instructions. State the decision points, required tools, file paths, invariants, failure handling, and verification commands another agent cannot safely infer. Prefer a short workflow in
SKILL.mdand conditional links such asreferences/artwork.mdfor specialized work. -
Create the required artwork. In this repository, every new skill needs
assets/skill-cards/<slug>.svgand a linked row in the root README's Pick a skill table. When the collection uses cinematic banners, also createassets/skill-banners/<slug>.webpand use the banner in the root and skill READMEs. Read references/artwork.md before creating either asset.
What ships with it
3 files 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.
- 9d ago First seen · 66 lines · 86 tokens per session scan A 21561e778060
create-skill is a skill published in the GitHub repository tamdogood/builder-essential-skills (193 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 86 tokens to every session and 1,139 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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