fork-child-directive-guardrails

fork-child-directive-guardrails is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ychampion/cskill-agents. It costs 24 tokens per session (428 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of rules for keeping forked worker agents within their assigned instructions and handling shared cached work safely.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps structure prompts and guardrails for forked sub-agents, including fixed tool-result text, isolated worktrees, and pointer handling.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk that an isolated worker follows unrelated instructions, starts other workers, or produces inconsistent cached prompts.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Good fit It helps structure prompts and guardrails for forked sub-agents, including fixed tool-result text, isolated worktrees, and pointer handling.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/fork-child-directive-guardrails
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 ychampion/cskill-agents --skill fork-child-directive-guardrails
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ychampion/cskill-agents

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 fork-child-directive-guardrails

README.md
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Your own site
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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 fork-child-directive-guardrails

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/fork-child-directive-guardrails"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/fork-child-directive-guardrails.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 428 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 $0.00024 $0.00428
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00214
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00086
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00043

Measured 11d ago against content hash 978a81a1a92d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

fork-child-directive-guardrails 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 11d 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.

agents/claude-code/skills/fork-child-directive-guardrails/SKILL.md · 28 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 28 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

SKILL: Fork Child Directive Guardrails

Domain: agent-coordination Trigger: Apply this when a forked sub-agent inherits a conversation and must obey boilerplate guard text, cache-safe output, and explicit directive rules before running. Source Pattern: Distilled from reviewed subagent orchestration, isolation, and lifecycle implementations.

Core Method

Compose the fork prompt by merging the parent assistant message with placeholder tool results, then append a distilled directive that enumerates the guardrails (no sub-agents, no chatting, execute silently). Explicitly include the <fork-boilerplate> block and the fork directive prefix so downstream cache sharing sees identical bytes for repeated forks. The directive should reinforce pointer translation, note the isolated worktree, and remind the worker that system prompts do not apply.

Key Rules

  • Preserve the parent assistant message intact before the fork; do not rewrite tool labels or thinking blocks so the prompt cache remains compatible.
  • Build uniform placeholder tool_result blocks with fixed text (Fork started — processing in background) and append the directive block that lists the 10 non-negotiable rules before any user-facing output.
  • Include the <fork-boilerplate> tag per current cache strategy and apply fork directive prefix to keep child messages byte-identical across runs.
  • Explicitly mention that the worker is operating in a fork/isolated worktree and must translate inherited paths before editing.

Example Application

When imploding a background worker to handle tool-heavy tasks, inject this guardrail directive before executing the fork; downstream watchers will see the same prompt scaffold and track the worker as a fork without extra moderation.

Anti-Patterns (What NOT to do)

  • Do not omit the <fork-boilerplate> block or use variable placeholder text, which would invalidate cache sharing.
  • Do not let the fork spawn more agents or chat with humans — the directive must forbid sub-agent usage and conversation.

Read the full file on GitHub · 28 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. 11d ago First seen · 28 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A 978a81a1a92d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

fork-child-directive-guardrails is a skill published in the GitHub repository ychampion/cskill-agents (36 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 428 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 2026-08-30.