repo-bootstrap

repo-bootstrap is a skill for Claude Code from the-open-agent/oss-skills. It costs 111 tokens per session (1,692 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for setting up a new open-source code repository or filling in the basic files an existing one lacks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting a project, publishing private code, or adding files such as a license, README, contribution guide, issue forms, and CI configuration.
Why use it?
It prevents common gaps in licensing, documentation, contribution rules, security reporting, and automated checks before others depend on the project.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Part of the oss-skills plugin — 18 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when starting a project, publishing private code, or adding files such as a license, README, contribution guide, issue forms, and CI configuration.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/the-open-agent/oss-skills/repo-bootstrap
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 the-open-agent/oss-skills --skill repo-bootstrap
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/the-open-agent/oss-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install oss-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 18 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 repo-bootstrap

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-open-agent/oss-skills/repo-bootstrap/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-open-agent/oss-skills/repo-bootstrap)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-open-agent/oss-skills/repo-bootstrap"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-open-agent/oss-skills/repo-bootstrap/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 repo-bootstrap

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-open-agent/oss-skills/repo-bootstrap"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-open-agent/oss-skills/repo-bootstrap.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 111 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,692 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.
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 $0.00111 $0.01692
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.00846
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00338
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00169

Measured 12d ago against content hash 9e20ffdf148d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

repo-bootstrap 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 12d 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/repo-bootstrap/SKILL.md · 132 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 132 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Repo Bootstrap

Getting the substrate right once removes a hundred small frictions later. This skill covers the baseline files, the ordering, and the pre-publication scrub that catches what you cannot un-publish.

Order of operations

Do these in order. Each unlocks the next.

  1. Name and one-liner — you cannot write a README without them
  2. License — before the first external contribution, not after (license-and-legal)
  3. .gitignore + .editorconfig — before the first commit that leaks build artifacts
  4. README skeleton — install → usage → why (readme-that-converts)
  5. CI — a green check on the first PR sets the standard (ci-pipelines)
  6. CONTRIBUTING + CODE_OF_CONDUCT — before you invite anyone
  7. Issue/PR templates — before the issue tracker gets noisy (issue-triage)
  8. SECURITY.md — before someone needs to report a vulnerability (supply-chain-security)
  9. First tagged release — an untagged repo reads as unfinished (release-engineering)

The baseline file set

File Non-negotiable? Notes
LICENSE Yes Full text, exact SPDX-recognized copy. Not a link.
README.md Yes The whole project for 95% of visitors.
.gitignore Yes Start from github/gitignore for your language.
CONTRIBUTING.md Yes once public Setup, test, PR expectations.
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Yes once public Contributor Covenant 2.1 + a real contact address.
SECURITY.md Yes once used Reporting channel + supported versions.
.github/workflows/ci.yml Yes Even one job. Red/green is a social signal.
.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/ At stage 2+ Forms (.yml) beat markdown templates.
.github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md At stage 2+ Short. Long ones get deleted by contributors.
.editorconfig Yes Kills the tabs/spaces PR diff noise permanently.
CHANGELOG.md At first release See release-engineering.
CODEOWNERS At 3+ maintainers Auto-assigns review.
.github/dependabot.yml Yes See dependency-hygiene.
GOVERNANCE.md At stage 5 Premature for solo projects.

Read the full file on GitHub · 132 lines

Files

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.

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. 12d ago First seen · 132 lines · 111 tokens per session scan A 9e20ffdf148d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

repo-bootstrap is a skill published in the GitHub repository the-open-agent/oss-skills (5 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 111 tokens to every session and 1,692 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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