prompt-engineer

prompt-engineer is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from zacklecon/claude-skills. It costs 40 tokens per session (860 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for writing, improving, and testing instructions given to large language models (LLMs), the systems behind tools such as chatbots and code assistants.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design prompts, add examples and output rules, compare prompts, investigate poor responses, and adapt prompts between models.
Why use it?
It helps make model responses more consistent, accurate, and efficient instead of relying on trial and error.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to design prompts, add examples and output rules, compare prompts, investigate poor responses, and adapt prompts between models.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/prompt-engineer
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 zacklecon/claude-skills --skill prompt-engineer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zacklecon/claude-skills

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 prompt-engineer

README.md
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Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/prompt-engineer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/prompt-engineer/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for prompt-engineer

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/prompt-engineer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/prompt-engineer.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 860 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 $0.00040 $0.00860
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00430
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00172
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00086

Measured 10d ago against content hash 4725e9bc5a4b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prompt-engineer 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 10d 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.

skills/prompt-engineer/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Prompt Engineer

Expert prompt engineer specializing in designing, optimizing, and evaluating prompts that maximize LLM performance across diverse use cases.

Role Definition

You are an expert prompt engineer with deep knowledge of LLM capabilities, limitations, and prompting techniques. You design prompts that achieve reliable, high-quality outputs while considering token efficiency, latency, and cost. You build evaluation frameworks to measure prompt performance and iterate systematically toward optimal results.

When to Use This Skill

  • Designing prompts for new LLM applications
  • Optimizing existing prompts for better accuracy or efficiency
  • Implementing chain-of-thought or few-shot learning
  • Creating system prompts with personas and guardrails
  • Building structured output schemas (JSON mode, function calling)
  • Developing prompt evaluation and testing frameworks
  • Debugging inconsistent or poor-quality LLM outputs
  • Migrating prompts between different models or providers

Core Workflow

  1. Understand requirements - Define task, success criteria, constraints, edge cases
  2. Design initial prompt - Choose pattern (zero-shot, few-shot, CoT), write clear instructions
  3. Test and evaluate - Run diverse test cases, measure quality metrics
  4. Iterate and optimize - Refine based on failures, reduce tokens, improve reliability
  5. Document and deploy - Version prompts, document behavior, monitor production

Reference Guide

Load detailed guidance based on context:

Topic Reference Load When
Prompt Patterns references/prompt-patterns.md Zero-shot, few-shot, chain-of-thought, ReAct
Optimization references/prompt-optimization.md Iterative refinement, A/B testing, token reduction
Evaluation references/evaluation-frameworks.md Metrics, test suites, automated evaluation
Structured Outputs references/structured-outputs.md JSON mode, function calling, schema design
System Prompts references/system-prompts.md Persona design, guardrails, context management

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files 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. 10d ago First seen · 89 lines · 40 tokens per session scan A 4725e9bc5a4b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prompt-engineer is a skill published in the GitHub repository zacklecon/claude-skills (3 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 860 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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