NSDI Writing Style Agent Skill

Use when drafting or revising NSDI prose — building the operational-pain-to-design-principle arc, fitting argument and figures into 12…

Context cost
1.6k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 6.5 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
MITthe author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Use when drafting or revising NSDI prose — building the operational-pain-to-design-principle arc, fitting argument and figures into 12 pages with references and appendices outside the cap, calibrating claims to trace and testbed evidence, and writing for reviewers who read tail percentiles before adjectives.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

documentationwriting

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md6.5 kB · preview
--- name: nsdi-writing-style ---
6# NSDI Writing Style
7
8An NSDI paper argues that a nameable design idea, embodied in a working networked
9system, holds up under realistic traffic. The prose exists to make that chain
10checkable. Format facts below are the NSDI '27 CFP as rendered on 2026-07-08.
11
12## The opening arc
13
14NSDI first pages that work tend to execute five beats in order (see the rebuilt
15example in
16[../../resources/worked-examples/01-introduction.md](../../resources/worked-examples/01-introduction.md)):
17
181. **Operational pain, evidenced** — a failure shape, cost, or limit shown in a trace
19 or deployment, not asserted from intuition.
202. **Why the networked setting causes it** — the distributed or stack-level reason
21 local fixes fail. This beat is also the scope defense; a paper that cannot write it
22 is drifting out of the CFP's "design of networked systems or the networking stack."
233. **The design principle, named** — the transferable idea, stated so another team
24 could apply it to a different system.
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md983 words
Files1
LicenceMIT
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈90
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
1,535
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
0.81%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 8% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

1.6k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Middling. Fine to keep on in a project where you use it weekly, worth unloading in one where you never do.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 6.5 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md6.5 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing. The MIT licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# NSDI Writing Style · 1.6k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/nsdi-writing-style/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/nsdi-writing-style" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style ] || { mv .claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/nsdi-writing-style" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add brycewang-stanford/nsdi-writing-style

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/nsdi-writing-style/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/nsdi-writing-style" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/nsdi-writing-style" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/nsdi-writing-style/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencebrycewang-stanford/nsdi-writing-style

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

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