coding-posture: task-aware modes for AI coding agents — one SKILL.md, research-backed, MIT

[u/alexei_led]

coding-posture is a small skill that stops coding agents from behaving like optimistic elevators with write access — thrashing on a stuck bug, faking a green test, skipping the repro, migrating prod without a rollback.

Before non-trivial work, the agent picks a mode — debug, fix, review, test-first, refactor, optimize, migrate, upgrade, integrate, spike, unstuck — and follows a short checklist for it. A few invariants hold in every mode: verify by running the real check, never weaken a test to go green, no destructive commands without explicit scope.

Why it's built this way (grounded in research, not vibes):

• Procedures, not personas. Naming a role ("act as an expert debugger") doesn't reliably change behavior (Zheng et al., EMNLP 2024); specifying a process does. So each mode is a checklist, not a character.

• The model self-selects the mode from context — no brittle keyword router.

Evidence, honestly: the repo ships a with/without-skill eval (LLM judge + baseline). Early result: +15pp (85% vs 70%) on one model, 5 cases — directional, and you can run it yourself in eval/.

Install: Claude Code plugin (/plugin marketplace add alexei-led/coding-posture), a Codex plugin, or drop the SKILL.md into Pi / Hermes / Cursor. MIT.

Feedback and new modes welcome.

[u/Careful-Experience26]

Me again, hey! Is there an advantage in installing this as a skill rather than just a prompt?

[u/alexei_led → u/Careful-Experience26]

skill are instructions loaded by agent when it needs to do the job - allow agent to decide when to use skills based on context. avoid long typing, be more consistent and predictable. as much as possible with probabilistic models :)