Getting it into your agent
It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/transparent-pegasus/herdrpowersnpx agentmods add skills/transparent-pegasus/herdrpowers/writing-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/transparent-pegasus/herdrpowers/writing-skills)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/transparent-pegasus/herdrpowers/writing-skills"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/transparent-pegasus/herdrpowers/writing-skills/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/transparent-pegasus/herdrpowers/writing-skills"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/transparent-pegasus/herdrpowers/writing-skills.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00020 | $0.05793 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00010 | $0.02897 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00004 | $0.01159 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00002 | $0.00579 |
Grade A, and why
writing-skills 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 11d 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.
This is a copy
94% identical to writing-skills — 16 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 680 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Writing Skills
Overview
Writing skills IS Test-Driven Development applied to process documentation.
Personal skills live in your runtime's skills directory
You write test cases (pressure scenarios with subagents), watch them fail (baseline behavior), write the skill (documentation), watch tests pass (agents comply), and refactor (close loopholes).
Core principle: If you didn't watch an agent fail without the skill, you don't know if the skill teaches the right thing.
REQUIRED BACKGROUND: You MUST understand test-driven-development before using this skill. That skill defines the fundamental RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle. This skill adapts TDD to documentation.
Official guidance: For Anthropic's official skill authoring best practices, see anthropic-best-practices.md. This document provides additional patterns and guidelines that complement the TDD-focused approach in this skill.
What is a Skill?
A skill is a reference guide for proven techniques, patterns, or tools. Skills help future agents find and apply effective approaches.
Skills are: Reusable techniques, patterns, tools, reference guides
Skills are NOT: Narratives about how you solved a problem once
TDD Mapping for Skills
| TDD Concept | Skill Creation |
|---|---|
| Test case | Pressure scenario with subagent |
| Production code | Skill document (SKILL.md) |
| Test fails (RED) | Agent violates rule without skill (baseline) |
| Test passes (GREEN) | Agent complies with skill present |
| Refactor | Close loopholes while maintaining compliance |
| Write test first | Run baseline scenario BEFORE writing skill |
| Watch it fail | Document exact rationalizations agent uses |
| Minimal code | Write skill addressing those specific violations |
| Watch it pass | Verify agent now complies |
| Refactor cycle | Find new rationalizations → plug → re-verify |
The entire skill creation process follows RED-GREEN-REFACTOR.
What ships with it
6 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.
- 11d ago First seen · 680 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A c0eb7741a927
writing-skills is a skill published in the GitHub repository transparent-pegasus/herdrpowers (11 stars, last pushed 14d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 5,793 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 94% identical to writing-skills, differing in 16 lines, and is treated as a copy.
Other skills, from other repositories
tdd-cycle
Execute full TDD red-green-refactor cycle with validation gates. Use when saying "TDD cycle", "test-driven development", or "full TDD workflow".
implement
Use when an approved plan and task list exist and it is time to turn them into working, tested code — the SDD phase after analyze and before verify. Enforces TDD: a failing test comes before the code that makes it pass, one task at a time, appended to a progress ledger that survives compaction. Delegates test tooling…
tdd
A Test-Driven Development guide. TDD means writing a failing test first, adding the smallest implementation that passes it, and then improving the code while keeping the tests passing.
debugging
A structured method for finding and fixing software bugs. It starts by writing a test that reproduces the failure, then investigates its underlying cause before making a small fix.
atomic-tdd
Test-first discipline. Auto-triggers on "let's implement X", "add feature Y", "fix bug Z", "write a test for", "implement", "build out", and similar pre-code-change phrases. Iron rule: failing test exists before production code. Skip only for pure docs/config changes with an explicit "skipped because:" note. Explicit…
ralphctl-test-driven-development
Execute-phase skill — write the failing test before the code that makes it pass; for bug fixes, this is the reproduction test itself. Use for any logic change, bug fix, or behavioural modification; for the full root-cause triage pipeline around an unexpected failure, see ralphctl-debugging-and-error-recovery.