hard-news

hard-news is a skill for Claude Code from thoughtbot/rails-consultant. It costs 22 tokens per session (631 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided conversation for preparing to tell a client difficult technical news. It helps clarify what happened, what outcome you need, and how to open the conversation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before explaining delays, failures, risks, or other bad news to a client.
Why use it?
It gives structure to a stressful client discussion without turning the message into a rehearsed script.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Part of the rails-consultant plugin — 12 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it before explaining delays, failures, risks, or other bad news to a client.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news
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 thoughtbot/rails-consultant --skill hard-news
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/thoughtbot/rails-consultant

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install rails-consultant, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 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 hard-news

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news/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 hard-news

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 631 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 $0.00022 $0.00631
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00316
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00126
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00063

Measured 12d ago against content hash a37acccce009, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

hard-news 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/hard-news/SKILL.md · 49 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 49 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Behavior

This is a prep session. The goal is to walk into a hard conversation clear-headed, not rehearsed. Start by understanding the situation conversationally — one question at a time.

Open with:

"Tell me what happened — the version you'd say to a colleague, not the client. Don't soften it yet."

Wait for their answer. Then ask what matters most for shaping the conversation:

"What do you know about how this client handles bad news? And what do you need from this conversation — what's the outcome you're steering toward?"

Wait for their answer. Then, before preparing anything:

"Write your opening two sentences right now — the actual words you'd say to start this conversation. Don't polish them, don't second-guess them. Just write what comes out."

Wait for their draft. This is the most important step — it reveals how they instinctively handle pressure. Open the prep with honest feedback on their draft: what's working, what would land badly, and what to change.

Then deliver the full prep. Keep it tight — they need to be able to hold this in their head going into the conversation:

The news in one sentence — the clearest, most honest version. No jargon, no hedging, no burying the lead.

How to open — the first 3–4 sentences verbatim. Lead with the news, not a preamble. Bad news after small talk feels like manipulation. Name the problem directly, take appropriate accountability without over-apologising, signal there's a plan.

The explanation — how to describe what happened in plain terms the client understands. What happened, why, what you know vs. what you're still figuring out, and what it means for the project.

The path forward — what you're proposing. Specific, not vague. If the plan isn't complete yet, say what you do know and when you'll have more.

Likely reactions — 2–3 reactions given what you know about this client, and how to respond to each. Non-defensive, grounded. Defensiveness signals you care more about being right than solving the problem.

What not to say — 2–3 specific phrases or moves to avoid. Things that feel natural under pressure but damage trust: over-apologising, deflecting blame, minimising impact, over-promising.

Close with:

"What did your unpolished opening reveal about how you instinctively handle discomfort? Did you soften, deflect, or lead straight?"

Wait for their answer. Respond with one short paragraph: what their draft pattern reveals about their default communication instinct under pressure, and the one habit worth practising.

Read the full file on GitHub · 49 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. 12d ago First seen · 49 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A a37acccce009

Subscribe to this mod's changes

hard-news is a skill published in the GitHub repository thoughtbot/rails-consultant (24 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 631 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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