red-pen

red-pen is a skill for Claude Code from wpgaurav/claude-code-skills. It costs 147 tokens per session (2,161 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A strict copy-editing review based on rules for clear language and practical typography. It marks problems in prose without rewriting the text for you.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review drafts for clarity, concision, grammar-related wording issues, formatting, and AI-like writing habits. It reports each issue with a short quotation, an explanation, and a suggested fix.
Why use it?
It helps find vague, inflated, awkward, or poorly formatted writing that can be missed during normal proofreading. The feedback separates language problems, typography problems, and signs of automated writing.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter.

Needs its repository: it reads a path above its own folder, which exists only inside the repository. The line is Written by [Rich Tabor](https://github.com/richtabor/agent-skills/tree/main/skills/red-pen) and redistributed here with attribution. The only changes are this n.

Good fit Use it to review drafts for clarity, concision, grammar-related wording issues, formatting, and AI-like writing habits. It reports each issue with a short quotation, an explanation, and a suggested fix.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

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.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wpgaurav/claude-code-skills
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/wpgaurav/claude-code-skills/red-pen

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.

agentmods badge for red-pen

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wpgaurav/claude-code-skills/red-pen.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/wpgaurav/claude-code-skills/red-pen)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wpgaurav/claude-code-skills/red-pen"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wpgaurav/claude-code-skills/red-pen.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 147 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,161 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 $0.00147 $0.02161
Opus 5 $0.00073 $0.01081
Sonnet 5 $0.00029 $0.00432
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00216

Measured 8d ago against content hash 9b1f8170bfbe, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

red-pen 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 8d 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.

red-pen/SKILL.md · 170 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 170 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Red Pen

Written by Rich Tabor and redistributed here with attribution. The only changes are this note and the frontmatter metadata. The upstream repository publishes no license file, so this folder is not covered by this repository's MIT license. See NOTICE.md.

You are a ruthless but fair copy editor. Your job is to find every place where the writing is flabby, vague, pretentious, or typographically sloppy — and say so clearly. You don't rewrite the piece. You mark it up and explain what's wrong.

How to review

Read the entire piece first. Then go through it again and flag every issue you find. Group your feedback into three sections: Language, Typography, and AI Tells. Within each section, list issues in the order they appear in the text.

For each issue:

  1. Quote the offending passage (keep it short — just enough to locate it)
  2. Name the problem in a few words
  3. Suggest a fix or, if the fix is obvious, just explain why it's a problem

After the issue list, close with a brief overall impression — one or two sentences on the piece's biggest strengths and its single most important area for improvement.

Don't sugarcoat, but don't be cruel. The goal is to make the writing better, not to make the writer feel bad.

Language rules

Inspired by Orwell's rules. The spirit matters more than the letter — Orwell's sixth rule is "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

Dead metaphors

Flag any metaphor, simile, or figure of speech that has lost its force through overuse. These are phrases people reach for without thinking about what the words actually mean. Examples: "level playing field", "think outside the box", "at the end of the day", "move the needle", "low-hanging fruit", "deep dive", "unpack", "lean in", "double down".

The test: if you've seen it in a hundred blog posts, it's dead. Fresh metaphors that create a vivid picture are fine — encouraged, even.

Read the full file on GitHub · 170 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. 8d ago First seen · 170 lines · 147 tokens per session scan A 9b1f8170bfbe

Subscribe to this mod's changes

red-pen is a skill published in the GitHub repository wpgaurav/claude-code-skills (3 stars, last pushed 18d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 147 tokens to every session and 2,161 once invoked, about $0.0007 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

humanizer

Rewrite AI-sounding text so it reads like the writer without changing what it says. Use when editing or reviewing prose for AI tells: not-X-but-Y contrasts, one-line closers, staged openers, forced triads, dashes everywhere, inflated claims, sales language, stock AI words, bold labels, or filler. Based on Wikipedia's…

blader/humanizer · 81 tokens

shuorenhua

A writing guide for making Chinese and English text sound more natural and less formulaic while preserving facts, technical terms, and responsibility.

MrGeDiao/shuorenhua · 68 tokens

speak-human-tw

A Traditional Chinese editing guide for making public-facing writing sound more natural and less machine-generated. It also checks wording associated with Mainland China and half-width punctuation.

Raymondhou0917/speak-human-tw · 220 tokens

book-genesis-full

Production Mode — full 17-phase pipeline with all 19 skills. Use when you want the complete industrial pipeline with research, evaluation, editorial packaging. For most users, use /book-genesis (Craft Mode) instead.

felipelobomotta-blip/book-genesis-v4 · 50 tokens

voice-fingerprint

Builds the Voice DNA document — a per-character voice specification that the writer uses to differentiate every character. Includes global narrative voice, per-character voice cards with speech patterns + voice-under-pressure variants, anti-pattern checklist, and benchmark samples. The document that makes the…

felipelobomotta-blip/book-genesis-v4 · 63 tokens

hook-craft

Specializes in chapter openings (hooks) and chapter endings (pulls). Every chapter must start with a reason to keep reading and end with a reason to turn the page. Runs after prose-craft, before chaos-engine. The skill that prevents the reader from putting the book down.

felipelobomotta-blip/book-genesis-v4 · 61 tokens