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 agentmods add skills/wshobson/agents/team-communication-protocolsnpx skills add wshobson/agents --skill team-communication-protocolsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wshobson/agentsWhat 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 | $0.00101 | $0.01576 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00051 | $0.00788 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00020 | $0.00315 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00010 | $0.00158 |
Grade A, and why
team-communication-protocols 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 2d 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 — 181 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Team Communication Protocols
Protocols for effective communication between agent teammates, including message type selection, plan approval workflows, shutdown procedures, and common anti-patterns to avoid.
When to Use This Skill
- Establishing communication norms for a new team
- Choosing between message types (message, broadcast, shutdown_request)
- Handling plan approval workflows
- Managing graceful team shutdown
- Discovering teammate identities and capabilities
Message Type Selection
message (Direct Message) — Default Choice
Send to a single specific teammate:
{
"type": "message",
"recipient": "implementer-1",
"content": "Your API endpoint is ready. You can now build the frontend form.",
"summary": "API endpoint ready for frontend"
}
Use for: Task updates, coordination, questions, integration notifications.
broadcast — Use Sparingly
Send to ALL teammates simultaneously:
{
"type": "broadcast",
"content": "Critical: shared types file has been updated. Pull latest before continuing.",
"summary": "Shared types updated"
}
Use ONLY for: Critical blockers affecting everyone, major changes to shared resources.
Why sparingly?: Each broadcast sends N separate messages (one per teammate), consuming API resources proportional to team size.
shutdown_request — Graceful Termination
Request a teammate to shut down:
{
"type": "shutdown_request",
"recipient": "reviewer-1",
"content": "Review complete, shutting down team."
}
The teammate responds with shutdown_response (approve or reject with reason).
Communication Anti-Patterns
| Anti-Pattern | Problem | Better Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcasting routine updates | Wastes resources, noise | Direct message to affected teammate |
| Sending JSON status messages | Not designed for structured data | Use TaskUpdate to update task status |
| Not communicating at integration points | Teammates build against stale interfaces | Message when your interface is ready |
| Micromanaging via messages | Overwhelms teammates, slows work | Check in at milestones, not every step |
| Using UUIDs instead of names | Hard to read, error-prone | Always use teammate names |
| Ignoring idle teammates | Wasted capacity | Assign new work or shut down |
What ships with it
1 file 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.
- 2d ago First seen · 181 lines · 101 tokens per session scan A 5a356d8814f2
team-communication-protocols is a skill published in the GitHub repository wshobson/agents (39,318 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 101 tokens to every session and 1,576 once invoked, about $0.0005 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.
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