What is readme-hardening?

A workflow for making a project's README an accurate, runnable setup guide. It checks commands, dependencies, scripts, and required environment settings against the repository.

Use it to check setup and test commands, document exact scripts, list required environment variables, and improve project bootstrapping before handoff or publication.

It removes vague or broken onboarding instructions that stop a new engineer from installing, testing, or starting the project. It treats the README as instructions to verify, not just descriptive text.

readme-hardening — Skill for Claude Code by yeaight7/agent-powerups

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 yeaight7/agent-powerups --skill readme-hardening

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/yeaight7/agent-powerups

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install documentation-systems, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 3 commands.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yeaight7/agent-powerups/readme-hardening/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/yeaight7/agent-powerups/readme-hardening)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yeaight7/agent-powerups/readme-hardening"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yeaight7/agent-powerups/readme-hardening/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yeaight7/agent-powerups/readme-hardening"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yeaight7/agent-powerups/readme-hardening.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 705 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00042	$0.00705
Opus 5.5	$0.00017	$0.00282
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00008	$0.00141
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00071

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 9db0de708fe8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

readme-hardening 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 1mo 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.

plugins/documentation-systems/skills/readme-hardening/SKILL.md · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

A good README is an executable contract, not a marketing page. It must allow an agent or a new engineer to clone the repository and run tests within 3 minutes.

When to Use

Onboarding feedback says setup instructions fail or are ambiguous
The project's scripts, dependencies, or env requirements changed
Before publishing the repo or handing it to another team or agent

Inputs

The current README and the repo it claims to describe
The actual scripts and tooling (package manifest, Makefile, CI config)

Workflow

Verify commands. Extract every shell command from the README (npm install, docker-compose up, cargo test) and check each against repo evidence — then run them in a clean environment where possible. If they fail, fix the README:
```
rg -n "^( {4}|\t)\S|^\$ " README.md            # command lines in the README
rg -n "\"scripts\"" -A 20 package.json         # do documented npm scripts exist?
```
Remove ambiguity. Replace "Install dependencies" with the exact command (npm ci). Replace "Run the app" with the exact script (npm run start:dev).
Environment checklist. Clearly list required environment variables in an env-example block — do not just say "set up your environment." Cross-check against what the code actually reads:
```
rg -no "process\.env\.[A-Z0-9_]+" src/ | sort -u
```
Architecture pointers. Provide exact file paths for entry points (e.g., "Main API routing is in src/routes.ts") to save agents from searching the entire tree.

Cover the minimum outline — confirm each section exists and is accurate:

# Project name + one-line purpose
## Install         # exact commands
## Run             # exact commands, expected output
## Test            # exact commands
## Configuration   # env vars with example values
## Architecture    # entry points by path
## Troubleshooting # the 2-3 most common failures and their fixes

Output

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 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.

1mo ago First seen · 72 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 9db0de708fe8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

readme-hardening is a skill published in the GitHub repository yeaight7/agent-powerups (6 stars, last pushed 19d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 705 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-09-14.

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