Agent skill

Historical Source Adapter

by GarethManning in GarethManning/education-agent-skills

Adapt a historical primary source for classroom use — modifying complexity and length while preserving features for sourcing, close reading, and corroboration.

Custom licenceAuto-check passedEducation

Install Historical Source Adapter

skills CLI
$ npx skills add GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill historical-source-adapter -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install GarethManning/education-agent-skills historical-source-adapter --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/GarethManning/education-agent-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/historical-thinking/historical-source-adapter .claude/skills/historical-source-adapter && 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
historical-source-adapter
GitHub stars
837
Token cost
~6k tokens
SKILL.md length
1,830 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
160
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Custom licence

At a glance

Adapt a historical primary source for classroom use — modifying complexity and length while preserving features for sourcing, close reading, and corroboration.

  • Works in 3 steps: Every adaptation involves trade-offs.… → The skill adapts text, not images or… → Adaptation is not a substitute for…
  • A primary source is too complex for the target age group
  • SKILL.md covers What This Skill Does, Evidence Foundation, Input Schema and Prompt, plus 6 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Historical Source Adapter is an agent skill from GarethManning/education-agent-skills. Adapt a historical primary source for classroom use — modifying complexity and length while preserving features for sourcing, close reading, and corroboration. Use when a primary source is too complex for the target age group.

Its SKILL.md is about 6k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Education. The repository describes itself as: 165 evidence-grounded AI skills for teachers, school leaders and EdTech builders—pedagogy, learning science, curriculum, assessment and regeneration. Claude, Codex and Hermes.

When your agent uses it

  • A primary source is too complex for the target age group

Example prompts

  • “/historical-source-adapter”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Every adaptation involves trade-offs. Simplifying sentence structure may reduce the rhetorical force of the original. Cutting passages…
  2. The skill adapts text, not images or material objects. Historical sources include photographs, maps, political cartoons, artefacts, and…
  3. Adaptation is not a substitute for reading instruction. Students who cannot decode at all need reading support before they can engage with…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 6bbbce4. 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

Historical Source Adapter loads about 6k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 63 tokens; SKILL.md has 1,830 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~63
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~6k

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

Its licence (Custom licence) doesn't allow us to republish the file, so here is its outline and opening line. It has 1,830 words (~6,011 tokens).

“Adapts a historical primary source for classroom use — modifying language complexity, length, and presentation while preserving the features that make the document analytically valuable for historical thinking. The output includes the adapted source with full attribution, transparent documentation of…”

— opening of SKILL.md by GarethManning, Custom licence
name
historical-source-adapter
disable-model-invocation
false
user-invocable
true
effort
medium
skill_id
historical-thinking/historical-source-adapter
skill_name
Historical Source Adapter
domain
historical-thinking
version
1.0
contributor
Sean Hu
evidence_strength
moderate
evidence_sources
Reisman (2012) — Reading like a historian: a document-based history curriculum intervention in urban high schools, Wineburg, Martin & Monte-Sano (2011)…

Read the full SKILL.md on GitHub

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/historical-thinking/historical-source-adapter of GarethManning/education-agent-skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 6bbbce4

Compare with similar skills

Historical Source Adapter 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.

Historical Source Adapter compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Historical Source Adapter this skillGarethManning/education-agent-skills837—~6kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
DeepTutor CLIHKUDS/DeepTutor41k—~2.8kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
AI Engineering Placement Quizrohitg00/ai-engineering-from-scratch66k—~2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Deep Reading Analystginobefun/deep-reading-analyst-skill3534 repos~3.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
OpenMAIC Setup and ExtensionTHU-MAIC/OpenMAIC40k—~1.7kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT
Codebase to Coursezarazhangrui/codebase-to-course5.7k—~4.4kAutomated safety check: PassNone

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Categories

Questions about Historical Source Adapter

What does Historical Source Adapter do?

Adapt a historical primary source for classroom use — modifying complexity and length while preserving features for sourcing, close reading, and corroboration. Historical Source Adapter is an agent skill from GarethManning/education-agent-skills. Adapt a historical primary source for classroom use — modifying complexity and length while preserving features for sourcing, close reading, and corroboration.

When should I use Historical Source Adapter?

Historical Source Adapter fits situations like: A primary source is too complex for the target age group.

How do I install Historical Source Adapter in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill historical-source-adapter -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/historical-thinking/historical-source-adapter in GarethManning/education-agent-skills) into .claude/skills/historical-source-adapter in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Historical Source Adapter in Codex?

Run `npx skills add GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill historical-source-adapter -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/historical-thinking/historical-source-adapter in GarethManning/education-agent-skills) into .agents/skills/historical-source-adapter in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Historical Source Adapter 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 GarethManning/education-agent-skills --skill historical-source-adapter -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/historical-source-adapter, .gemini/skills/historical-source-adapter, .github/skills/historical-source-adapter and .opencode/skills/historical-source-adapter in your project.

What does Historical Source Adapter need to run?

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

Does Historical Source Adapter 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 Historical Source Adapter 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 Historical Source Adapter use?

Historical Source Adapter has a licence file (the repository's licence) that doesn't match a standard licence. Read it on GitHub before reusing the skill.

How many tokens does Historical Source Adapter use?

About 6k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 24k 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 Historical Source Adapter?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Historical Source Adapter: DeepTutor CLI (HKUDS/DeepTutor, 41k stars), AI Engineering Placement Quiz (rohitg00/ai-engineering-from-scratch, 66k stars), Deep Reading Analyst (ginobefun/deep-reading-analyst-skill, 353 stars) and OpenMAIC Setup and Extension (THU-MAIC/OpenMAIC, 40k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Historical Source Adapter?

GarethManning (a GitHub user) maintains it in GarethManning/education-agent-skills, which has 837 GitHub stars. The repository holds 160 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on August 28, 2026.

Source: GarethManning/education-agent-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.