What is initialize-sdlc-directory?

A setup workflow that creates a standard .sdlc directory and fills it with templates. SDLC means software development life cycle, the process used to plan, build, test, and maintain software.

It helps initialize SDLC files in a project root or chosen directory. It can use a local or external storage location and mirror created files when configured.

It gives a project the expected documentation structure while preserving files that already exist.

initialize-sdlc-directory — Skill for Claude Code by tomzx/agents

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 tomzx/agents --skill initialize-sdlc-directory

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tomzx/agents

Made for: Claude Code.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tomzx/agents/initialize-sdlc-directory/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tomzx/agents/initialize-sdlc-directory)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tomzx/agents/initialize-sdlc-directory"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tomzx/agents/initialize-sdlc-directory/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tomzx/agents/initialize-sdlc-directory"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tomzx/agents/initialize-sdlc-directory.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 27 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,304 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. Third-party audits

NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026

SkillSpector: 2 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

medium Rogue Agent · line 15
Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.

Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
medium Rogue Agent · line 88
Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.

Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.

How audits are shown

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00027	$0.02304
Opus 5.5	$0.00011	$0.00922
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00005	$0.00461
Haiku 4.5	$0.00003	$0.00230

Measured 16d ago against content hash 52da3e8909b2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

initialize-sdlc-directory 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 16d 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/initialize-sdlc-directory/SKILL.md · 161 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 161 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Initialize SDLC Directory

Creates the .sdlc/ directory structure in the project root (or $1 if provided) and populates it with default templates. Files that already exist are never overwritten — this is safe to run on a project that has partially adopted the structure.

Prerequisites

Apply the shared SDLC conventions in skills/sdlc/references/shared.md.
Write access to the project root
The canonical templates at ../sdlc/templates/ relative to this skill file (i.e. skills/sdlc/templates/)

Steps

Determine the project root: use $1 if provided, otherwise use the current working directory.
Resolve the SDLC write location per sdlc/references/shared.md: default <project-root>/.sdlc/; if it cannot be created and SDLC_DIR is set, use $SDLC_DIR/{owner}/{repository}/.sdlc/; mirror created files to the external store when set. Record which location was used in the report.
Pre-approve the external SDLC stores in the agent CLI. Most harnesses prompt before reading or writing outside the workspace; grant read/write for ~/.sdlc/** and /tmp/sdlc/** up front. Detect which config(s) exist and add only missing entries, preserving all other fields:
- opencode (~/.config/opencode/opencode.json): set permission.external_directory entries "~/.sdlc/**": "allow" and "/tmp/sdlc/**": "allow".

For any other harness, add the equivalent entry following its own schema. Record what was created, updated, or skipped (already present), and remind the user to restart their CLI.

For each directory below, create it (under the resolved write location) if it does not already exist:

.sdlc/
.sdlc/context/
.sdlc/features/
.sdlc/templates/
.sdlc/templates/features/
.sdlc/templates/knowledge/
.sdlc/knowledge/
.sdlc/knowledge/assumptions/
.sdlc/knowledge/decisions/
.sdlc/knowledge/learnings/
.sdlc/knowledge/questions/

Create .sdlc/.gitignore — only if it does not already exist — with the following content to keep local-only workflow state out of version control:
```
# Local-only workflow state — do not commit
# Orchestrator run state
state.yml
# Per-feature progress tracking and session logs
features/*/progress.md
```
state.yml (the orchestrator run state) and each feature's progress.md (progress tracking + session log) are regenerated per machine and per run, so they must never be committed or included in PRs. The features/*/progress.md pattern ignores only the per-feature files, not the template at templates/features/progress.md. Only the repo's .sdlc/.gitignore is meaningful; do not create a .gitignore under the SDLC_DIR mirror.

Read the full file on GitHub · 161 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.

16d ago Changed · +3 lines 52da3e8909b2
22d ago Changed · +15 lines 2631c4465e6a
24d ago Changed b50ce622cbd8
1mo ago Changed · -1 lines 5e5ce3729a0d
1mo ago Changed scan B → A 2b0702db1b70
1mo ago First seen · 144 lines · 27 tokens per session scan B 244cd0e63bfb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

initialize-sdlc-directory is a skill published in the GitHub repository tomzx/agents (13 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 2,304 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-09-03.

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