work-init

A guide for creating the smallest useful foundation for a new software project. It helps settle essential choices about the product, platform, tools, dependencies, and checks before implementation begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Initializing or scaffolding a project, choosing a runtime and toolchain, identifying required services and packages, and verifying that the project builds, runs, and passes relevant quality checks.
Why use it?
New projects can become bloated with unnecessary packages, features, or infrastructure before the basic system works. This guide keeps the first version focused on one working end-to-end capability.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/xcaeser/work-skill/work-init
Any agent
npx skills add xcaeser/work-skill --skill work-init
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/xcaeser/work-skill

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 554 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00043 $0.00554
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00277
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00111
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00055

Measured yesterday against content hash 1b8316ce83df, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

work-init 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 yesterday.

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/work-init/SKILL.md · 61 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 61 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Work / 1. Init

Create the smallest project foundation that builds and runs. Preserve reliability, user state, simplicity, and clean breaks. Do not add product features, speculative packages, compatibility scaffolding, or infrastructure the foundation does not yet need.

Resolve only essential choices

Inspect the destination and conversation before asking anything. Reuse answers already given. If the request is sufficient, proceed without an interview.

Ask no more than three short questions at a time, in this order:

  1. What is being built, where should it live, and which platform must it run on?
  2. Which language, runtime or toolchain, and minimum supported version are required?
  3. Which packages, services, storage, authentication, and quality commands are genuinely required now?

Offer sensible defaults when local conventions or the ecosystem make them clear. Explain only choices with a meaningful tradeoff.

Before writing, state:

  • Foundation goal: one end-to-end capability the scaffold must prove.
  • Ready when: build, run, and relevant quality checks succeed.
  • Does not count: an empty or unexecuted scaffold.
  • Deferred: product features and infrastructure intentionally excluded.

Build in working layers

  1. Read local instructions and inspect the destination for unrelated files.
  2. Create an idiomatic scaffold with native metadata and one obvious entry point.
  3. Add only approved dependencies; prefer platform and existing workspace tooling.
  4. Format or lint, run focused tests when behavior exists, and perform a clean build.
  5. Start the project locally when safe and useful.
  6. Exercise one relevant failure boundary, such as invalid configuration or a missing required dependency.
  7. Inspect generated files and lockfiles. Report exact commands and evidence.

Do not invent tests for an empty entry point. When the scaffold establishes real behavior, state the behavior being protected, why it matters, the test level, and the exact observable assertion before test edits.

Read the full file on GitHub · 61 lines

Files

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.

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. yesterday First seen · 61 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 1b8316ce83df

Subscribe to this mod's changes

work-init is a skill published in the GitHub repository xcaeser/work-skill (2 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 554 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

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