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Agent skill

Catchup

by LilMGenius in LilMGenius/paperthin

Rebuild the human's lost context on a project from live state, in plain language: what needs them, what changed, what new words mean.

MITAuto-check passedWriting & Content

Install Catchup

skills CLI
$ npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill catchup -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install LilMGenius/paperthin catchup --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/LilMGenius/paperthin.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/coil/catchup .claude/skills/catchup && 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
catchup
GitHub stars
1.1k
Token cost
~785 tokens
SKILL.md length
428 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
28
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Rebuild the human's lost context on a project from live state, in plain language: what needs them, what changed, what new words mean.

  • Works in 5 steps: Read live state only: recent file… → Anchor on the human's last touch (their… → Compose in decision order, not… → …
  • The human returns after a gap
  • SKILL.md covers Goal, Workflow, Rules and Verification
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Catchup is an agent skill from LilMGenius/paperthin. Rebuild the human's lost context on a project from live state, in plain language: what needs them, what changed, what new words mean. Use when the human returns after a gap, says they can't follow the project anymore, asks what happened or what a term means, or before deciding what to do next when their mental model is stale. Read-only; it briefs, it does not act.

Its SKILL.md is about 790 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 Writing & Content, covering Plain language and style rules. The repository describes itself as: Low-level agentic design patterns. Turning old engineering wisdom into reflexes your agent reaches for on its own—on any agent. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • The human returns after a gap
  • Says they cant follow the project anymore
  • Asks what happened
  • What a term means

Example prompts

  • “/catchup”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Read live state only: recent file mtimes, git log/diffs, plan and state docs, re0-memo notes,
  2. Anchor on the human's last touch (their last message, judgment, or commit). Everything after
  3. Compose in decision order, not chronological order
  4. Gloss on first use: any project-specific term appearing in the briefing gets an inline
  5. Keep the default short (a screen or less). End with drill-down offers per section, not with

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 7d5dc62. 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

Catchup loads about 785 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 94 tokens; SKILL.md has 428 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~94
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~785

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 LilMGenius/paperthin at commit 7d5dc62, republished under its MIT licence (© LilMGenius). 428 words, ~785 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/catchup/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
catchup
description
Rebuild the human's lost context on a project from live state, in plain language: what needs them, what changed, what new words mean. Use when the human returns after a gap, says they can't follow the project anymore, asks what happened or what a term means, or before deciding what to do next when their mental model is stale. Read-only; it briefs, it does not act.

Catch the human up at their eye level, from state, not from memory.

Goal

catchup is the re-entry point for a lost human. Long agent cycles coin words, rename files, run experiments, and make calls faster than the owner can follow. Before any next action makes sense, the owner's mental model must be reloaded. catchup reads the live project state and returns a briefing a person with zero retained context can act on. It runs before the next move gets decided: catchup restores the map, so that decision starts from truth instead of a stale memory of it.

Workflow

  1. Read live state only: recent file mtimes, git log/diffs, plan and state docs, re0-memo notes, task boards. Never brief from conversation memory alone — memory is what drifted.
  2. Anchor on the human's last touch (their last message, judgment, or commit). Everything after that point is the delta; everything before it is assumed known and stays out.
  3. Compose in decision order, not chronological order:
    • Needs you — decisions, judgments, or inputs only the human can give, each self-contained enough to act on without opening another file.
    • Changed while you were away — outcomes, not process. "The plan's scoring rule was replaced" beats "I ran three analysis passes."
    • New words — every term coined or repurposed since their last touch, one line each, with where it lives. Skip terms they already used themselves.
  4. Gloss on first use: any project-specific term appearing in the briefing gets an inline plain-language aside at its first occurrence, even if a glossary section follows.
  5. Keep the default short (a screen or less). End with drill-down offers per section, not with everything expanded.
Show full SKILL.md (153 more words)Show less

Rules

  • State-grounded: every claim traces to a file, commit, or artifact the human can open. No "as we discussed."
  • Read-only on the project. catchup briefs; it does not fix, rename, or decide.
  • The ask comes first. A briefing that buries the one question needing the human is a log.
  • Outcome voice, not journey voice. Narrating the agent's process is self-report, not briefing.
  • Silence the settled: closed decisions and healthy metrics get one line or none.
  • Honest completeness: "done" means verified done; "moved" is not "reconciled"; say which.
  • Do not re-explain terms the human demonstrably knows (they used them first).

Verification

Before finishing:

  1. Cold-read the briefing: no sentence requires pre-gap memory or an unglossed coined term to parse.
  2. The "needs you" items are each actionable without opening another file.
  3. Every claim has a checkable source (file, commit, artifact path).
  4. It fits on a screen, with expansion offered rather than delivered.

© LilMGenius, 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 skills/coil/catchup of LilMGenius/paperthin.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 7d5dc62

Compare with similar skills

Catchup 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.

Catchup compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Catchup this skillLilMGenius/paperthin1.1k—~785Automated safety check: PassMIT
Asd Ste100danyuchn/asd-ste100-skill4.2k—~4.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Simple Issue Descriptionevery-app/open-seo23k1 repos~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Ponytail AuditDietrichGebert/ponytail159k—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Technical Writing Standardcursor/plugins10k10 repos~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Natural Japanese Business Writingcoji/natural-japanese1.9k—~2.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about Catchup

What does Catchup do?

Rebuild the human's lost context on a project from live state, in plain language: what needs them, what changed, what new words mean. Catchup is an agent skill from LilMGenius/paperthin. Rebuild the human's lost context on a project from live state, in plain language: what needs them, what changed, what new words mean.

When should I use Catchup?

Catchup fits situations like: the human returns after a gap; says they cant follow the project anymore; asks what happened; what a term means.

How do I install Catchup in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Catchup in Codex?

Run `npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill catchup -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/coil/catchup in LilMGenius/paperthin) into .agents/skills/catchup in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Catchup 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 LilMGenius/paperthin --skill catchup -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/catchup, .gemini/skills/catchup, .github/skills/catchup and .opencode/skills/catchup in your project.

What does Catchup need to run?

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

Does Catchup 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 Catchup 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 Catchup use?

Catchup 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 Catchup use?

About 785 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.1k 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 Catchup?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Catchup: Asd Ste100 (danyuchn/asd-ste100-skill, 4.2k stars), Simple Issue Description (every-app/open-seo, 23k stars), Ponytail Audit (DietrichGebert/ponytail, 159k stars) and Technical Writing Standard (cursor/plugins, 10k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Catchup?

LilMGenius (a GitHub user) maintains it in LilMGenius/paperthin, which has 1,130 GitHub stars. The repository holds 28 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 1, 2026.

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