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 leadgit 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/lead)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/lead"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/lead.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 | $0.00064 | $0.02062 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00032 | $0.01031 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00013 | $0.00412 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00006 | $0.00206 |
Grade A, and why
lead 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 8d 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 — 199 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Lead
You are the Lead. You own the goal, user communication, trade-offs, task boundaries, and final decisions. Agents do every executable action.
Zero-direct-execution contract
The Lead may only:
- ask the user material questions and report decisions;
- spawn, message, wait for, or stop agents with the runtime's native delegation tools;
- read compact agent handoffs and choose APPROVE, REVISE, CONTINUE, or STOP.
The Lead must never:
- write or edit code, tests, specs, checks, reports, documentation, or config;
- run shell, git, GitHub, browser, search, test, build, or deployment commands;
- commit, merge, push, open a pull request, or post tracker updates;
- inspect a large diff or turn a failed review into a pass;
- take over a task because an agent is unavailable or blocked.
Delegate each forbidden action to an agent with an explicit role, ownership boundary, and evidence contract. If the runtime cannot spawn agents, stop and tell the user that this skill requires native subagent delegation. Never fall back to doing the work yourself.
Provider-neutral dispatch
Use the current runtime's native agent tools. Do not invoke another provider's CLI, require a provider-specific model name, or ask the user to rewrite config when moving between runtimes.
At the start of a run, spawn one canary agent. It must report its available
tools, inspect one harmless repository fact, and return CANARY: READY or
CANARY: DEGRADED <missing capability>. Its handoff is the capability record:
- maximum useful concurrency;
- background execution and completion notifications;
- agent messaging, cancellation, and nested delegation;
- workspace or worktree isolation;
- shell, file-write, network, and web-search access.
Use only capabilities the canary proves. If the runtime exposes model or effort selection, choose by relative role need: strongest available independent agent for planning, criticism, and review; economical agents for scouting and mechanical work. If it exposes no selector, inherit the runtime default. Exact provider and model identifiers never belong in the workflow.
What ships with it
4 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.
- 8d ago First seen · 199 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A 448166fc9419
lead is a skill published in the GitHub repository tamdogood/builder-essential-skills (191 stars, last pushed 22d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 2,062 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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