r/claudeskills

I was tired of guessing why my usage limit ran out. So I asked Claude for a token dashboard on top of my own session stats.

It shows:

\- a score ring and traffic lights for the week

\- daily spend with trend lines

\- a split by cache reads, writes and output

\- which part of the context eats the most

The numbers come from my saved runs and session metrics collected on the desktop app.

Anyone else tracking this? What do you look at first?

Built using the new Dashboards feature still in beta. Go test it: open Artifacts menu in Claude and select the new Dasboard type. The link below contains some database types you can select. Data within a Project should be selectable as a datasource (not tested). My demo uses Claude live session data and data collected into Notion.

Almost everything visual can be changed: buttons, filters, tabs, tables, charts, colours, drilldowns. All changes are made by Claude through file edits, not by dragging in the app. (doc, unverified for in-app editing)

Data comes from a live connector query or an attached file up to 8 MB. The implementation is hybrid, uses the new Dashboards feature, skills (26) and the base is a Project with data-driven instructions and context content (20 .md files).

Some technical info is available:

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/17454700-get-started-with -claude-dashboards

I got tired of taking notes that never turned into anything useful, so I built Smart Notes — a Claude Skill that reads your study materials (PDFs, transcripts, readings) and builds out a proper Obsidian vault from them.

What it does:

- Creates linked notes per topic, not just a dump of text
- Maintains an index showing how topics relate and where coverage is thin
- Tracks your progress and flags knowledge gaps
- Generates adaptive flashcards targeting your weak spots
- Updates existing notes instead of duplicating them when you add new material

It's free and open source: https://github.com/OnePathToFreedom/smart-notes-skill

Would love feedback, especially from anyone already running an Obsidian-based study system.

I built Golden Thread, a Claude Code plugin that gives every session the same memory. It's one Obsidian vault of plain markdown and git. Sessions read it at startup, track decisions and open questions as they work, and at the close file what they learned in the right place: research, decisions, a handoff for next time, or a shared wiki. My machine crashed mid-build this morning, and the next session picked up the exact question that was still open.

Your rules stick. Ten Core rules are re-asserted for every response, and each one is a plain file you can read or add to. Break one of the critical ones, like committing code whose tests haven't been seen to pass, and it's blocked before it happens.

It's tailored to your role. Pick developer, product or project manager, executive, leadership, operations, DBA or network admin, and each project starts with that role's templates (a status board, a one-page brief, an IP/VLAN map) plus 12 one-tap buttons.

Security is yours to set. Choose a level from strict to paranoid, or switch on each protection by itself: sandbox mode, locked plugin code, single-use permits for risky actions, and more. With gt unlock on, pushing, using a stored credential or turning a protection off waits for your Touch ID, Windows Hello or an authenticator code. Folder locking is coming soon.

LOTR puts one gateway in front of your MCP servers (GitHub, Jira, Microsoft 365): about 50% fewer tokens in typical use, up to 90% with a specialised agent, with more agents coming.

Everything stays on your machine in your own git, and nothing is pushed or published without you.

Free and open source (MIT licence): https://github.com/shaven/golden-thread

Install: clone the repo, then run bash golden-thread/golden-thread-plugin/install.sh --vault ~/MyVault

Explainer page: https://shaven.github.io/golden-thread-info/

Curious which of these would actually be useful to you.

v0.21.0 releases tomorrow (Oct 11) at 5 pm CDT.

Skill (free): https://github.com/evilmartians/agent-skills/blob/main/skills/skills-visibility/SKILL.md

Or npx skills add https://evilmartians.com/agent-skills --skill skills-visibility -a claude-code -g

I packaged our playbook for publishing a skill catalog into a skill. Point your agent at it and it builds the .well-known/agent-skills/index.json discovery index, packs the tarballs, and computes the digests, so npx skills, gh skill, and Claude's marketplace can all install from your domain.

The blog post explains why each piece works the way it does, including why you shouldn't point the index at Github: https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/publishing-agent-skills-discovery-index

Disclosure: I work at Evil Martians and it's our blog.

I installed the two biggest debugging skills on skill.sh: Matt Pocock's diagnosing-bugs and Superpowers' systematic-debugging and tested how effective they actually were against a plain claude code prompt.

The bugs are 15 real ones from my own repo's history (yes, only one repo, but I decided against taking from benchmarks because those test cases are often contaminated). Then I graded each run with the tests from the real fix, which none of them could see.

The skills weren't worse, but did they did ~3 extra minutes per bug to get to the same place for no uplift and increased cost from having the skill installed.

All three tests successfully fixed 9/15 bugs; however they didn't all fix the same bugs. Plain Claude gave up on one that both skills solved. Meanwhile, Matt's skill missed one the others got, and Superpowers missed a 12-line fix that plain Claude did in 6 minutes for $0.79. This could possibly just be from variance, as I only ran each skill against each bug three times.

Matt Pocock's skill did provide some small uplift: it was the only one that never broke another test, and it made the smallest changes (median 32 lines vs. 41 and 48).

Reasoning:

According to research, when models already know what to do(like how to debug), skills don't help much unless they introduce a new method that the model hasn't seen already. Perhaps Anthropic trained their models to Matt Pocock and Superpowers' debugging processes, or at the very least something similar.

Conclusion:

Obviously, this doesn't mean you shouldn't install Matt Pocock or Superpowers. But if you have them installed or plan on installing them, perhaps consider uninstalling the debugging portion to save on token costs.

Version 3.0.0 of my visual agent orchestrator Orgtree is released! And the ticket this time is: speed!

Get it here: https://github.com/Maurdekye/orgtree/releases/latest

Orgtree v2 was a great step forward and significantly improved the usability of the app. But over time one thing became clear: it was slooow. As orgs got big, when many agents ran at once, and as history accumulated, the works really began to tar up. Actions would start to take several seconds to complete, and in the worst cases, sometimes a minute or longer. And for a system that's supposed to support running dozens, maybe even hundreds of agents at the same time over extended periods, that's just unacceptable.

So, I redesigned the data access model. Now instead of a simple Sqlite database backing it, everything routes through a genuine embedded parallelized Postresql database, with several worker processes dividing the cpu load up at once. Along with various other data transfer optimizations, this speeds up Orgtree tremendously; whereas running more than 10-15 agents at once used to gum up the works and slow everything to a crawl, now you can run theoretically hundreds, or even thousands at once, and the system still stays responsive, with most actions resolving in under 100ms! (if your PC can handle it, that is) So if you ever liked using Orgtree but were unsatisfied with the performance when your org started to get bigger, try it again and see if v3 makes a difference.

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For those unfamiliar, Orgtree is my open source visual agentic orchestrator I've been working on for several months now that I rely on every day to do my cross-provider agentic work. It organizes your agents into a visual tree hierarchy, which you can freely rearrange, open up and chat with any agent, and connect multiple AI provider accounts to at once (anthropic, openai, google, and openrouter). It has:

• A credit budget system for delegating work to agents in a managed way
• Agents run in the background while the window is closed
• Native multi-accounting support for Claude and ChatGPT accounts
• A dedicated Work Docket system that works like a trello / kanban board for agents
• An agent mail system for cross-agent communication
• A mail hub system for cross-system, cross-network agent communication
• Pin or pop out any panel or agent chat in the app, to arrange your workspace the way you like and see exactly the information you need to at all times
• Usage limit info for all connected accounts at once, in one place
• Markdown and HTML based document presentation
• Autonomous "watchdog" tasks that can check a condition on a regular basis and wake an agent up
• A unique compaction method that helps keep cache misses small
• And many more smaller quality of life features that tie the experience together

Since I began working on it, I haven't touched any of claude code, codex, or any other agentic coding assistant directly; all my work goes through Orgtree. Look through my post history if you want to see more details on previous releases.

This post however, is about v3. And v3 has a number of brand-new big ticket features:

New Storage Model: This is the big one. Ever dissatisfied with how slow orgs became in v2 when lots of agents were running at once? v3 fixes that almost completely! Nearly every action you or an agent can perform is now near-instantaneously responsive, even with hundreds or thousands of agents running at once. It's an actual mass-agentic orchestrator now, not just a pretty app wearing the skin of one.

Multi-Window Support: The app's whole ux has been given an overhaul to support opening multiple org windows simultaneously. Before, Orgtree only ever let you open and talk to one org at once; you had to switch the active window every time you wanted to switch between projects. Now, no longer; you can have as many org windows with as many canvases as you like open at once at the same time, and work between all of them in parallel.

Attention View: Orgtree v3 introduces a new view mode: Attention view. Unlike just being another panel, when enabled via the switch in the header, Attention view takes the place of the canvas and simplifies the interface dramatically. It has two panels: the dynamic agent desk, and the Needs Attention list.

• The dynamic agent desk functions similarly to a pinned agent desk, but with the ability to open a drawer of every agent in the org and swap out the agent that appears in it; it's like a superpowered pinned desk.
• The Needs Attention list is a special combined view of your inbox & work docket, but filtered to only elements that need your active input or attention. For now, that includes questions asked / requests made by agents, docket tickets that need your attention, and urgent mail sent to your inbox. Everything that needs you in one place, and not more.

Attention view was designed to minimize the amount you need to see in order to get agents moving and get tasks completed; a place on the left to unstick any blockers, and a place on the right to ask questions to your coordinator and make requests.

It doesn't stop there, however: both panels of the attention view, like any other panel in orgtree, can be pinned or popped out, and can then be used alongside the canvas view. So don't feel like you have to choose between your two favorite children: steal one or both attention panels and mix-and-match them with the canvas, to get the best of both worlds!

Ring view: Large orgs getting too wide for your screen to view all of them at once? You can now arrange your org in a ring shape. Top level agents form a circle around the central node, and fan out in all directions from there.

And Many small additional features:

• cheap-compact all
• see agent names on hover
• expanded context menu options
• run as administrator
• configurable charter templates folder
• a first-time new user tutorial for hiring and chatting with your first agent
• ability to open an agent's desk as a quick modal to see what it's doing without moving the canvas
• anytime an agent's name appears in the app, you can left or right click it to focus it or open its context menu, as though you were clicking the agent directly

If you liked Orgtree v2, you'll love this!

If you don't know what Orgtree is, but have multiple AI subscriptions and want a good way of utilizing them all at once, then give it a try!