palimpsest

palimpsest is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library. It costs 191 tokens per session (1,685 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A layered way to read texts by examining their literal meaning, word histories, literary echoes, and later interpretations. A palimpsest is a manuscript where older writing remains faintly visible beneath newer writing.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps with close reading, annotation, etymology, allusions, and comparing how different traditions have interpreted a text.
Why use it?
It reveals meanings and assumptions that a surface reading can miss.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit It helps with close reading, annotation, etymology, allusions, and comparing how different traditions have interpreted a text.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library/palimpsest
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 Wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library --skill palimpsest
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 palimpsest

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library/palimpsest/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library/palimpsest)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library/palimpsest"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library/palimpsest/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 palimpsest

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library/palimpsest"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library/palimpsest.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 191 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,685 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 $0.00191 $0.01685
Opus 5 $0.00096 $0.00843
Sonnet 5 $0.00038 $0.00337
Haiku 4.5 $0.00019 $0.00169

Measured 9d ago against content hash 452093239c43, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

palimpsest 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 9d 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/palimpsest/SKILL.md · 250 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 250 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Palimpsest

Reading through the layers, writing over the ghosts


What This Is

A practice for layered hermeneutic engagement with texts. A palimpsest is a manuscript where earlier writing has been scraped away and overwritten—but traces remain, bleeding through, haunting the surface.

This skill treats all texts as palimpsests: surfaces concealing depths, words containing etymological ghosts, meanings layered like geological strata.


When to Invoke

Use this skill when:

  • A text deserves more than surface reading
  • Etymology matters (the word's history illuminates its meaning)
  • Multiple interpretive traditions have engaged the material
  • You want to annotate in layers rather than flatten
  • The human asks for "deep reading" or "close reading"
  • Something old speaks to something new

The Layers

Layer 1: Surface (τὸ φαινόμενον)

What does the text say at face value?

  • Literal meaning
  • Stated claims
  • Explicit structure

Layer 2: Etymology (τὸ ἔτυμον)

What ghosts haunt the words?

  • Word origins (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Proto-Indo-European)
  • Semantic drift over centuries
  • Cognates and false friends
  • What the word used to mean

Tools:

  • etymonline.com
  • Wiktionary etymologies
  • Oxford English Dictionary (historical citations)

Layer 3: Allusion (τὸ ὑποκείμενον)

What other texts echo here?

  • Direct quotations
  • Structural parallels
  • Genre conventions
  • Intertextual resonances

Layer 4: Reception (ἡ παράδοσις)

How has this text been read?

  • Historical interpretations
  • Scholarly controversies
  • Misreadings that became canonical
  • Translation choices that shaped understanding

Layer 5: Application (ἡ ἑρμηνεία)

What does this mean now, here, for us?

  • Contemporary relevance
  • Personal resonance
  • Productive anachronism
  • Creative misreading (intentional)

The Process

1. Select the Text

Choose a passage worth excavating. Could be:

  • A poem, paragraph, sentence, or single word
  • A philosophical fragment
  • A code comment (!)
  • A prompt or AI output
  • An ancient text meeting modern context

Read the full file on GitHub · 250 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. 9d ago First seen · 250 lines · 191 tokens per session scan A 452093239c43

Subscribe to this mod's changes

palimpsest is a skill published in the GitHub repository Wondermonger-daydreaming/claude-skills-library (6 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 191 tokens to every session and 1,685 once invoked, about $0.0010 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

skill-builder

Automatically detect source types and build AI skills using Skill Seekers. Use when the user wants to create skills from documentation, repos, PDFs, videos, or other knowledge sources.

yusufkaraaslan/Skill_Seekers · 38 tokens

offensive-advanced-redteam

Comprehensive red team operations methodology covering full engagement lifecycle from planning through reporting. Addresses engagement scoping and rules of engagement negotiation, multi-tier C2 infrastructure design with redirectors and domain fronting, malleable traffic profiles and beacon tradecraft, OPSEC…

SnailSploit/Claude-Red · 146 tokens

offensive-crypto-attacks

Systematic methodology for identifying and exploiting cryptographic implementation weaknesses in real-world applications. Covers padding oracle attacks against CBC-mode ciphers with PKCS7 padding (Vaudenay's original attack through modern padbuster automation), ECB mode exploitation including block cut-and-paste and…

SnailSploit/Claude-Red · 261 tokens

offensive-c2-frameworks

Command and Control framework deployment, configuration, and operational tradecraft for red team engagements. Covers Cobalt Strike (malleable C2 profiles, Beacon types HTTP/HTTPS/DNS/SMB, Beacon Object Files for in-memory execution, sleep and jitter tuning, named pipe pivoting), Sliver (implant generation across…

SnailSploit/Claude-Red · 250 tokens

offensive-dependency-confusion

Deep-dive offensive methodology for dependency confusion and namespace attacks across all major package ecosystems. Covers npm scope confusion exploiting the gap between public and private scoped packages and .npmrc misconfigurations where registry mappings fail to pin internal scopes exclusively. Addresses PyPI…

SnailSploit/Claude-Red · 234 tokens

offensive-parameter-pollution

HTTP parameter pollution (HPP) checklist: duplicate parameter injection, backend vs frontend parsing differences, WAF bypass via HPP, server-side vs client-side HPP, and practical exploitation patterns. Use when testing web applications for parameter handling flaws.

SnailSploit/Claude-Red · 0 tokens