Agent skills

Personal agent skills for engineering, review, investigation, and verification.

Repository structure

Keep skills/ as the shared source for all agents and environments. Individual skill installers such as npx skills use those folders directly. The portable plugin.json, Codex compatibility manifest in .codex-plugin/, and marketplace catalog in .agents/plugins/ add distribution formats without moving or copying the skill sources.

A future Claude Code plugin can add its own manifest and marketplace metadata pointing to the same skills/ directory. Keep host-specific packaging outside the skills, preserve each skill's existing invocation metadata, and avoid forks or generated copies of skill instructions for each host. This change packages Codex distribution; it does not replace individual skill installation or add a Claude Code plugin installer.

Install as a Codex plugin

This repository is also the plugin: inprealpha-agent-skills, in the inprealpha marketplace. The existing skills/ directory is the single source of truth; plugin packaging does not change skill behavior, licenses, or invocation policies.

In a current Codex CLI:

codex plugin marketplace add inprealpha/agent-skills --ref main
codex plugin add inprealpha-agent-skills@inprealpha

Start a new chat after installation. In the desktop Plugins Directory, select the inprealpha source and install Abir's Agent Skills if you prefer the UI. To refresh it later, run codex plugin marketplace upgrade inprealpha and start a new chat.

Use in Codex Cloud

Installing a local marketplace does not by itself provision cloud sessions. Choose the route your account supports:

Workspace plugin: A workspace admin can open Admin > Plugins > Add > Import marketplace, enter https://github.com/inprealpha/agent-skills, leave Path empty, and set Branch to main. Import and make the plugin available to your role. Install/enable it, then start a new cloud task and check that its skills are available. The bundle contains no MCP servers or desktop hooks.

Cloud project setup: If workspace import is unavailable, ask the environment setup agent to install the same skill folders into your target project's .agents/skills/. Add this repository to the environment, then run:

python3 /path/to/agent-skills/scripts/install_cloud_skills.py --project /path/to/your-project

Replace those paths with the actual cloud checkout paths. Alternatively, from the target project root, use this setup snippet (requires Python 3, Git, and GitHub network access):

skills_checkout="$(mktemp -d)"
git clone --depth 1 --branch main https://github.com/inprealpha/agent-skills.git "$skills_checkout" &&
python3 "$skills_checkout/scripts/install_cloud_skills.py" --project "$PWD"

Publish/republish the prepared environment and start a new task in that project. For reproducible environments, use a reviewed commit rather than following the moving branch. The helper copies every supporting file and license, accepts an identical repeat install, and refuses differing existing skills before copying anything. It does not overwrite or remove project skills; review conflicts when upgrading. This is repository skill discovery, not a cloud marketplace install.

Invoke and verify

Select a skill with @ where the UI supports it, or $skill-name in Codex CLI. For a first check, ask: “Use the architect skill to propose a design for this change; read its SKILL.md first and keep this request design-only.” Check that the agent actually reads the installed skill. Ten skills preserve explicit-only invocation through agents/openai.yaml; craft, orchestrate-work, review-loop, and simplify-code retain automatic discovery.

The plugin supplies instructions, not capabilities: delegation, browser control, connected services, and project runtimes must be available in the cloud session. It does not include personal config.toml, credentials, conversation history, or global AGENTS.md. Avoid installing duplicate standalone and plugin copies in the same session. Cloud import and runtime behavior must be verified in your workspace.

Official references: plugin packaging, workspace GitHub import, skill discovery, and cloud environments.

Validate and build an uploadable ZIP

Run these commands from a repository checkout. Development dependency: Python 3.10+ and PyYAML==6.0.2. The cloud setup helper uses only the Python standard library. CI validates packaging, tests the setup helper, and publishes a ZIP artifact on each push or pull request.

python3 -m pip install PyYAML==6.0.2
python3 scripts/package_plugin.py --output dist/inprealpha-agent-skills.zip
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v

The ZIP puts manifests and skills/ at its root, includes the cloud setup helper, and excludes Git history, build tooling, CI files, and marketplace metadata. Existing per-skill license notices are retained; this package does not grant a new repository-wide license.

Install individual skills

Use the skills CLI:

npx skills add inprealpha/agent-skills

List the available skills without installing:

npx skills add inprealpha/agent-skills --list

Install one skill:

npx skills add inprealpha/agent-skills --skill simplify-code

Skills

Skill	Description
architect	Design caller usage, interfaces, data types, and module ownership before implementing a change.
blast-radius	Assess what a change could break beyond its diff and test the assumptions its safety depends on.
craft	Simplify writing, documentation, code, architecture, interfaces, and creative work so people can quickly understand and use it. Use for “AI slop,” confusing or overcomplicated output, project reviews, and making the current result ready to share or ship. Not an AI detector.
create-verification-skill	Create executable project verification instructions with a feature map and retained evidence.
hillclimb	Improve one measurable outcome through isolated hypotheses, repeated measurements, and regression checks.
how	Explain a subsystem through traced runtime flow, data ownership, and concrete code references.
interrogate	Adversarially review a change and deliver a prioritized verdict grounded in reachable failures.
maintain-verification-skill	Audit a project verification skill against current source and observed application behavior.
orchestrate-work	Coordinate substantial work with ownership suited to the task, parallel execution, and fresh perspectives. Use for broad ambiguous goals, separable workstreams, or requested team workflows.
reflect	Extract durable lessons from a work session and route them to focused skill or tooling improvements.
review-loop	Finish work through repeated fresh-context reviews and fixes. Use when the user wants an autonomous review loop after a brief alignment on the outcome and review perspectives.
simplify-code	Simplify code when asked to review over-engineering or apply cleanup, including redundant tests and avoidable dependencies. Preserve behavior; keep unrelated feature work and general correctness reviews outside this skill's scope.
skill-evaluation	Compare skill variants on realistic tasks with controlled inputs and evidence-based scoring.
why	Investigate the history and rationale behind code, with cited facts and explicit uncertainty.

Skill instructions and required supporting files are in skills/. Harness support depends on the tools available in the current agent environment; cross-harness behavior has not been comprehensively tested.

Attribution

Adapted upstream material retains its MIT license notices within each skill directory:

architect, blast-radius, create-verification-skill, hillclimb, how, interrogate, maintain-verification-skill, reflect, skill-evaluation, and why: pstack by Lauren Tan, revision f5bdd6826fd0a0d9cbc4347134c3a74a200b9d9d.
orchestrate-work and review-loop: selected procedures and writing guidance from Matt Pocock skills, revision 3cca18b368ae95cdbdebbff572ccafa662551015.
simplify-code: Ponytail by DietrichGebert, revision 356918eba965ee1eac64bd3a7f0dd02108350de5.

craft is original work and includes a notice preserving the existing policy: no additional license is granted. No additional repository-wide license is specified for original contributions.