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Agent skill

Lathe Ask

by devenjarvis in devenjarvis/lathe

Answer a reader's question about a specific part of a Lathe tutorial, in session.

MITAuto-check passed

Install Lathe Ask

skills CLI
$ npx skills add devenjarvis/lathe --skill lathe-ask -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install devenjarvis/lathe lathe-ask --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/devenjarvis/lathe.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/lathe-ask .claude/skills/lathe-ask && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
lathe-ask
GitHub stars
1.7k
Token cost
~532 tokens
SKILL.md length
263 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
7
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Answer a reader's question about a specific part of a Lathe tutorial, in session.

  • Works in 5 steps: Read the part at ~/.lathe/tutorials//.… → Answer grounded in this tutorial's… → Point at the tutorial, don't re-derive… → …
  • SKILL.md covers Protocol and Boundaries — read-only,…
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Lathe Ask is an agent skill from devenjarvis/lathe. Answer a reader's question about a specific part of a Lathe tutorial, in session. Use when the user invokes /lathe-ask with a slug and part like "/lathe-ask digital-synth-zig part-02.md" followed by the question on the next line (the "Ask" button in lathe serve pastes exactly this).

Its SKILL.md is about 530 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

The repository describes itself as: Generate hands-on, multi-part technical tutorials on demand, with LLM skills tuned to make content approachable. Then you work through them yourself, by hand ✋. The licence is MIT.

Example prompts

  • “/lathe-ask digital-synth-zig part-02.md”
  • “/lathe-ask”

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Read the part at ~/.lathe/tutorials//. Read sibling parts (part-NN.md in the same dir) when the question reaches across parts or depends…
  2. Answer grounded in this tutorial's concrete artifact — the same controlling example, the same numbers, the same voice the tutorial used…
  3. Point at the tutorial, don't re-derive it. Prefer "look at the process_buffer loop in §3 — the modulo there is doing X" over a fresh…
  4. Be honest about gaps. If the question exposes something the tutorial got wrong, glossed over, or left under a [!UNVERIFIED] flag, say so…
  5. Stay engaged for follow-ups. This is a conversation, not a one-shot reply.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 1e7c9f6. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Lathe Ask loads about 532 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 74 tokens; SKILL.md has 263 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~74
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~532

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from devenjarvis/lathe at commit 1e7c9f6, republished under its MIT licence (© devenjarvis). 263 words, ~532 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/lathe-ask/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
lathe-ask
description
Answer a reader's question about a specific part of a Lathe tutorial, in session. Use when the user invokes /lathe-ask with a slug and part like "/lathe-ask digital-synth-zig part-02.md" followed by the question on the next line (the "Ask" button in `lathe serve` pastes exactly this).

Lathe — Ask About a Part

Answer a reader's question about one part of a stored tutorial, grounded in what that tutorial actually built. Triggered by:

/lathe-ask <slug> <part-NN.md>
<the reader's question>

The web "Ask" button pastes exactly that: the slug and part on the command line, the question on the next line. Parse all three.

Protocol

  1. Read the part at ~/.lathe/tutorials/<slug>/<part-NN.md>. Read sibling parts (part-NN.md in the same dir) when the question reaches across parts or depends on earlier setup — continuity matters here too.

  2. Answer grounded in this tutorial's concrete artifact — the same controlling example, the same numbers, the same voice the tutorial used. The reader is asking about their synth / their key-value store, not the topic in the abstract. Don't re-teach the whole topic from scratch.

  3. Point at the tutorial, don't re-derive it. Prefer "look at the process_buffer loop in §3 — the modulo there is doing X" over a fresh ground-up explanation. You're a guide standing next to them at the page they're reading.

  4. Be honest about gaps. If the question exposes something the tutorial got wrong, glossed over, or left under a [!UNVERIFIED] flag, say so plainly — don't paper over it. That's more useful than a confident hand-wave.

  5. Stay engaged for follow-ups. This is a conversation, not a one-shot reply.

Boundaries — read-only, conversational

  • There is no lathe ask command. This skill writes nothing and calls back into no CLI command — ask is deliberately conversation-only.
  • No state mutation: don't touch metadata.json, verify-result.json, or the part markdown. Don't verify, don't extend, don't tag.
  • Keep answers specific to this tutorial's concrete artifact, in its voice.

© devenjarvis, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in .claude/skills/lathe-ask of devenjarvis/lathe.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 1e7c9f6

Compare with similar skills

Lathe Ask next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Lathe Ask compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Lathe Ask this skilldevenjarvis/lathe1.7k—~532Automated safety check: PassMIT
Bilingual Paper ReaderYuan1z0825/nature-skills47k—~961Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Answer Ads Questionsgooseworks-ai/goose-skills1.2k—~3.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Logseq Answer Machinelogseq/logseq45k—~1.2kAutomated safety check: WarnAGPL-3.0
Step Partsearthtojake/text-to-cad19k1 repos~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Answering Research Questionswentorai/Research-Claw858—~4.9kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence

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More from devenjarvis/lathe

  • Lathe Extend

    devenjarvis/lathe

    Write the next part of an existing Lathe tutorial, in session.

    1.7k GitHub stars~1.4k tokensUpdated 2 mo ago
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  • Lathe Tag

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    Pick or backfill the search tags on a stored Lathe tutorial, in session.

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  • Lathe Verify

    devenjarvis/lathe

    Verify that a stored Lathe tutorial actually works by following it end to end in a fresh scratch dir, in session.

    1.7k GitHub stars~844 tokensUpdated 2 mo ago
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  • Lathe Voice

    devenjarvis/lathe

    Author a custom writing voice for Lathe tutorials, in session, then persist it via the CLI.

    1.7k GitHub stars~1.3k tokensUpdated 2 mo ago
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  • Lathe Work

    devenjarvis/lathe

    Run the Lathe worker loop so the web UI's Ask / Verify / Add-a-part buttons drive work directly in this session instead of handing back a command to paste.

    1.7k GitHub stars~1.7k tokensUpdated 2 mo ago
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  • Lathe

    devenjarvis/lathe

    Generate hands-on technical tutorials for any topic on demand.

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Questions about Lathe Ask

What does Lathe Ask do?

Answer a reader's question about a specific part of a Lathe tutorial, in session. Lathe Ask is an agent skill from devenjarvis/lathe. Answer a reader's question about a specific part of a Lathe tutorial, in session.

How do I install Lathe Ask in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add devenjarvis/lathe --skill lathe-ask -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/lathe-ask in devenjarvis/lathe) into .claude/skills/lathe-ask in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Lathe Ask in Codex?

Run `npx skills add devenjarvis/lathe --skill lathe-ask -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/lathe-ask in devenjarvis/lathe) into .agents/skills/lathe-ask in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Lathe Ask in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add devenjarvis/lathe --skill lathe-ask -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/lathe-ask, .gemini/skills/lathe-ask, .github/skills/lathe-ask and .opencode/skills/lathe-ask in your project.

What does Lathe Ask need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Lathe Ask is instructions for the agent only.

Does Lathe Ask access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Lathe Ask safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Lathe Ask use?

Lathe Ask is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Lathe Ask use?

About 532 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 2.1k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Lathe Ask?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Lathe Ask: Bilingual Paper Reader (Yuan1z0825/nature-skills, 47k stars), Answer Ads Questions (gooseworks-ai/goose-skills, 1.2k stars), Logseq Answer Machine (logseq/logseq, 45k stars) and Step Parts (earthtojake/text-to-cad, 19k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Lathe Ask?

devenjarvis (a GitHub user) maintains it in devenjarvis/lathe, which has 1,686 GitHub stars. The repository holds 7 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on August 3, 2026.

Source: devenjarvis/lathe on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.