create-task

A guide for creating Harbor tasks, which are benchmark problems used to evaluate AI agents. It covers the task instructions, test environment, reference solution, and verifier that checks the agent's work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to scaffold coding tasks, write agent instructions, build Docker environments, create pytest or custom verifiers, and prepare solution scripts.
Why use it?
It helps turn an idea into a repeatable evaluation with clear requirements and checks. It also guides decisions about testing and multi-step task structure.

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/zli12321/lhtb/create-task
Any agent
npx skills add zli12321/LHTB --skill create-task
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zli12321/LHTB

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,448 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan F 4 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 88% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00056 $0.03448
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.01724
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00690
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00345

Measured 2d ago against content hash a6b488aa3bcd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade F, and why

create-task scanned grade F with 4 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 2d 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.

Reaches for credential fileshighPrivilege escalation

SSH keys, cloud credentials, git-credentials, .npmrc, /etc/shadow: reading these is how a config file becomes a credential leak.

Generate an SSH key pair in the files `~/.ssh/id_rsa` and `~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub`.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/0.9.7/install.sh | sh

Recursive force deletehighDestructive command

rm -rf with a variable or a broad path is one typo away from removing the wrong tree.

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y openssh-client && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl
Origin

This is a copy

88% identical to create-task — 105 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

harbor/skills/create-task/SKILL.md · 399 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 399 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Guide the user through creating a new Harbor task end-to-end. Don't just dump commands — walk them through each decision, especially around the verifier (which is usually the hardest part).

Step 1: Scaffold the task

harbor task init "<org>/<task-name>"

Useful flags:

  • --description "..."
  • --author "Jane Doe <[email protected]>" (repeat for multiple authors)
  • --no-pytest — skip the pytest test template (use if planning Reward Kit or custom verifier)
  • --no-solution — skip solution/ directory
  • --metadata-template path.toml — pre-populate task.toml

Produces:

<task-name>/
├── instruction.md         # Task prompt for the agent
├── task.toml              # Config and metadata
├── environment/Dockerfile # Container definition
├── solution/solve.sh      # Reference solution (optional)
└── tests/test.sh          # Verifier script

If the user wants a multi-step task (ordered steps with per-step instructions, tests, and early stopping against a shared container), scaffold the single-step layout first, then convert to the steps/ layout described in the Multi-step tasks section below.

Step 2: Write instruction.md

This is the prompt the agent receives. Help the user write it clearly:

  • State the goal concretely — what file to create, what behavior to produce
  • Specify expected outputs — paths, formats, content
  • Include constraints — language, tools, approach
  • Don't leak the tests — describe what "done" looks like, not how you'll check it

Example (from the ssh-key-pair tutorial):

# SSH Key Pair Generation

Generate an SSH key pair in the files `~/.ssh/id_rsa` and `~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub`.

Don't make them password protected.

Step 3: Build the environment

Edit environment/Dockerfile to install dependencies the task needs. The agent works inside this container.

FROM ubuntu:24.04
WORKDIR /app

# Install what the task requires — NOT the solution
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y openssh-client && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

Read the full file on GitHub · 399 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. 2d ago First seen · 399 lines · 56 tokens per session scan F a6b488aa3bcd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

create-task is a skill published in the GitHub repository zli12321/LHTB (695 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 3,448 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it F with 4 findings (reaches for credential files, downloads and executes remote code, recursive force delete). It is 88% identical to create-task, differing in 105 lines, and is treated as a copy.