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 YannisKiefer/dark-psychology-skills --skill reading-peoplegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/YannisKiefer/dark-psychology-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/yanniskiefer/dark-psychology-skills/reading-people)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yanniskiefer/dark-psychology-skills/reading-people"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yanniskiefer/dark-psychology-skills/reading-people/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/yanniskiefer/dark-psychology-skills/reading-people"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yanniskiefer/dark-psychology-skills/reading-people.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00028 | $0.00432 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00014 | $0.00216 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00006 | $0.00086 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00043 |
Grade A, and why
reading-people 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 12d 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.
What it actually says
Reading People
The Big Idea
Words lie fast. Patterns lie slow.
Watch rhythm, message length, and timing changes. Not the words.
The Moves
-
Learn their normal first. How does THIS person usually write? Speed, length, style. A sudden change means something happened. Find out before you react.
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The yes/no test. Ask a question with two possible answers. Anything except yes or no IS the answer: "Did you look at it?" ... "It's interesting..." = they didn't look.
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Silence means almost nothing. Silence fits every story: busy, shopping rivals, scared, gone. Don't guess. Collect one fact instead: "Is it price, trust, or timing?"
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Catch the objection before they say it. Hedging and topic switches mean an objection is forming. Answer it now. Once spoken, people defend it forever.
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Anger is pain in a costume. Rude messages usually mean: burned before, embarrassed, scared. Answer the pain. Never the anger. Logic on an angry person adds fuel.
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Tricks aimed at YOU:
- Rush clocks: "decide in 1 hour"
- Small gift first, big ask after
- "Don't tell your partner or lawyer"
- Many questions from them, zero answers to you
- Guilt flips: suddenly you owe them Two of these together? Slow down. Check facts yourself.
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The screenshot test. Write every message like it gets forwarded to a lawyer. Sometimes it is.
When It Backfires
- Reading one signal as proof. Wait for patterns.
- Believing someone else's label ("he's a tire kicker"). Judge fresh.
One-Line Memory
When someone pushes speed at you, that's when you slow down.
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.
- 12d ago First seen · 58 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A 96bbf59c8ebe
reading-people is a skill published in the GitHub repository YannisKiefer/dark-psychology-skills (5 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 432 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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