communication-style

communication-style is a skill for Claude Code from tzachbon/smart-ralph. It costs 26 tokens per session (692 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Rules for keeping an agent's output short, easy to scan, and focused on actions. They favor brief summaries, structured content, and numbered next steps.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them to shape concise plans, technical updates, tables, bullet lists, unresolved questions, and clearly ordered action steps.
Why use it?
They reduce long explanations and make plans or terminal output easier to read and act on.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the ralph-speckit plugin — 4 skills, 14 commands, 6 agents, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use them to shape concise plans, technical updates, tables, bullet lists, unresolved questions, and clearly ordered action steps.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/communication-style
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 tzachbon/smart-ralph --skill communication-style
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tzachbon/smart-ralph

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install ralph-speckit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 4 skills, 14 commands, 6 agents, 1 hook.

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 communication-style

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/communication-style/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/communication-style)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/communication-style"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/communication-style/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 communication-style

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/communication-style"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tzachbon/smart-ralph/communication-style.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 26 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 2 findings, up to high

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 →

  • high System Prompt Leakage · line 3
    Skill contains instructions that could directly expose system prompts, internal rules, or hidden instructions to users or external parties.
    Fix: Remove any instructions that reveal, print, or output system prompts or internal rules. System instructions should never be exposed to end users.
  • high System Prompt Leakage · line 20
    Skill contains instructions that could directly expose system prompts, internal rules, or hidden instructions to users or external parties.
    Fix: Remove any instructions that reveal, print, or output system prompts or internal rules. System instructions should never be exposed to end users.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00026 $0.00692
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00346
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00138
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00069

Measured 10d ago against content hash 902258f7aa20, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

communication-style 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 10d 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.

plugins/ralph-speckit/skills/communication-style/SKILL.md · 128 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 128 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Communication Style

Core Rule

Be extremely concise. Sacrifice grammar for concision.

Why

  • Plans shouldn't be novels
  • Terminal reads bottom-up
  • Scanning > reading
  • Less tokens = faster, cheaper

Output Rules

1. Brevity First

Instead of Write
"The user will be able to..." "User can..."
"This component is responsible for..." "Handles..."
"In order to achieve this, we need to..." "Requires:"
"It should be noted that..." (delete)

Use:

  • Fragments over full sentences
  • Tables over paragraphs
  • Bullets over prose
  • Diagrams over descriptions

2. Structure for Scanning

Every output follows this order:

1. Brief overview (2-3 sentences MAX)
2. Main content (tables, bullets, diagrams)
3. Unresolved questions (if any)
4. Numbered action steps (ALWAYS LAST)

3. End with Action Steps

ALWAYS end with numbered concrete steps.

## Next Steps

1. Create auth module at src/auth/
2. Add JWT dependency
3. Implement login endpoint
4. Add tests

This is the LAST thing visible in terminal. Most important = most visible.

4. Surface Questions Early

Before action steps, list unresolved questions:

## Unresolved Questions

- OAuth provider preference? (Google, GitHub, both)
- Session duration requirement?
- Rate limiting needed?

Catches ambiguities before they become bugs.

Anti-Patterns

Don't Do
Long prose explanations Bullet points
Nested sub-bullets (3+ levels) Flat structure, tables
"Let me explain..." (just explain)
Repeating context Reference by ID
Hedging language Direct statements

Examples

Bad (verbose)

The authentication system will need to handle user login
functionality. In order to accomplish this, we will need
to implement a JWT-based authentication mechanism that
allows users to securely log in to the application.

Good (concise)

Auth system: JWT-based login

Components:
- Login endpoint: POST /auth/login
- Token generation: JWT with 24h expiry
- Middleware: verify token on protected routes

Read the full file on GitHub · 128 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. 10d ago First seen · 128 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 902258f7aa20

Subscribe to this mod's changes

communication-style is a skill published in the GitHub repository tzachbon/smart-ralph (537 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 692 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.