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.
npx skills add vinnie357/claude-skills --skill claude-output-stylesgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinnie357/claude-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/vinnie357/claude-skills/claude-output-styles)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vinnie357/claude-skills/claude-output-styles"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vinnie357/claude-skills/claude-output-styles/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/vinnie357/claude-skills/claude-output-styles"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vinnie357/claude-skills/claude-output-styles.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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 | $0.00079 | $0.02508 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00032 | $0.01003 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00016 | $0.00502 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00251 |
Grade A, and why
claude-output-styles 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 2mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 254 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Claude Code Output Styles
Guide for the native Claude Code output style feature and for applying the same response-contract pattern to agents, slash commands, teams, and skills.
Two Things This Skill Covers
- The Claude Code feature: a session-level system prompt modification selected via
/config, shipped as Markdown files, optionally bundled in plugins. - The pattern: a reusable response-format contract authored once and referenced from agents, commands, teams, or skills when consistent, parseable output is needed.
The feature affects the main agent loop only. The pattern is portable to anywhere a system prompt or instruction block is authored.
Part 1: The Claude Code Feature
What Output Styles Do
Output styles modify Claude Code's system prompt at session start. They can:
- Replace the default software-engineering instructions with a different role/tone/format
- Preserve core capabilities (file I/O, running scripts, TODO tracking)
- Keep or remove coding-specific instructions via
keep-coding-instructions
Output styles are always active once selected, for the whole session. They are set at session start — changes take effect next session so prompt caching stays stable.
Built-In Styles
| Style | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Default | Standard software-engineering system prompt |
| Proactive | Executes immediately, makes reasonable assumptions instead of pausing for routine decisions, and prefers action over planning — stronger autonomous-execution guidance than auto mode, applied without changing the permission mode |
| Concise | Leads with the result, skips preamble and narration, keeps responses short by default, while doing the engineering work as thoroughly as Default; error reports, security warnings, and destructive-action confirmations stay in full. Requires Claude Code v2.1.237+ |
| Explanatory | Adds educational "Insights" during task completion |
| Learning | Collaborative mode — Claude inserts TODO(human) markers for the user to fill in |
What ships with it
3 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.
- 2mo ago First seen · 254 lines · 79 tokens per session scan A 10ed21fdadd1
claude-output-styles is a skill published in the GitHub repository vinnie357/claude-skills (27 stars, last pushed 14d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 79 tokens to every session and 2,508 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.
claude-output-styles compared with skills from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| claude-output-stylesvinnie357/claude-skills | Skill | 27 | 14d ago | MIT | A | 79 | Claude Code |
| imagegenopenai/codex | Skill | 134k | today | Apache-2.0 | A | 113 | Codex |
| local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners | Skill | 79k | 2d ago | MIT | A | 200 | Claude Code, Codex |
| playwright-climicrosoft/playwright | Skill | 100k | today | Apache-2.0 | A | 19 | Claude Code |
| browser-automationopenclaw/openclaw | Skill | 394k | today | MIT | A | 36 | Claude Code |
| systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers | Skill | 315k | 6d ago | MIT | A | 21 | Claude Code |
| next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js | Skill | 143k | today | MIT | A | 95 | Claude Code |