dev-pitfalls

dev-pitfalls is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit. It costs 100 tokens per session (3,170 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A development checklist for common project, Git, Node.js, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) mistakes. It focuses on checking the project setup before investigating code errors.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before Git operations, the first npm install, or work on a WSL project to verify repository status, .gitignore settings, and the filesystem location of the project.
Why use it?
Some failures come from the project state rather than the code, such as working outside a Git repository or missing a rule that keeps node_modules out of version control. Checking these basics first avoids misleading errors and repeated troubleshooting.

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/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dev-pitfalls
Any agent
npx skills add TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit --skill dev-pitfalls
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit

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 dev-pitfalls

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dev-pitfalls.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dev-pitfalls)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dev-pitfalls"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dev-pitfalls.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 100 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,170 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. 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 $0.00100 $0.03170
Opus 5 $0.00050 $0.01585
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00634
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00317

Measured 5d ago against content hash ad2b6eec0a77, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

dev-pitfalls scanned grade B with 1 finding 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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

- **`ENOSPC: no space left on device`** from a dev server, `npm start`, Vite, nodemon, or VS Code is almost never disk space. It's the Linux inotify file-watcher limit (default ~8192), exhausted by a large project's file
.claude/skills/dev-pitfalls/SKILL.md · 119 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 119 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Common Dev Pitfalls (check the layer before debugging it)

These cost hours because the symptom points at the wrong thing, and they're easy to "fix" by going in circles. When something matches below, check the cause here before debugging the code.

Check project state before acting

Claude's frequent miss is assuming project state instead of verifying it. Two checks, stated plainly to the user:

  • Is it even a git repo? Before staging, committing, or diffing, confirm the repo exists (git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree). If it doesn't, say so directly, "this directory isn't a git repository yet, run git init first", rather than running git commands that fail confusingly or silently acting on a parent repo.
  • Is node_modules ignored? Before the first commit, confirm .gitignore exists and lists node_modules/. Create .gitignore BEFORE npm install so it is never tracked. If it isn't ignored yet, say so before anything gets committed.

.gitignore only ignores UNtracked files. If node_modules (or .env, or build output) was already committed, adding it to .gitignore changes nothing, git keeps tracking it, and this is a classic "my .gitignore isn't working" loop. Untrack it, then commit:

git rm -r --cached node_modules
git commit -m "Stop tracking node_modules"

Confirm a rule actually bites with git check-ignore -v node_modules. Committed node_modules bloats the repo and breaks CI, its platform-specific compiled binaries fail on Linux runners. Same fix for anything that "won't stop showing up" after you ignored it.

WSL: put the project on the Linux filesystem, not /mnt/c

The single biggest WSL pitfall, and Claude rarely thinks to check it. A project under /mnt/c (any Windows drive) is reached from Linux over a 9P bridge, so:

  • file operations run 10-100x slower, npm install, git status, and test runs crawl
  • inotify is flaky across the bridge, so file watchers fire intermittently, hot reload and test watchers "work randomly" then silently stop, which becomes a circular debugging session if you chase it as a config problem
  • Linux permission bits are only emulated, chmod +x can silently fail and ssh rejects keys as "bad permissions"
  • editor integration breaks: Claude often can't see your active selection or the code you've highlighted, so it's working blind on what you're pointing at

Read the full file on GitHub · 119 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 · 119 lines · 100 tokens per session scan B ad2b6eec0a77

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dev-pitfalls is a skill published in the GitHub repository TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit (337 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 100 tokens to every session and 3,170 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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