Chunking Agent Skill

Use this skill whenever the user must hold a sequence of items in working memory — phone numbers, OTP codes, account IDs, address strings…

Context cost
4.5k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
2 files · 17.8 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
Apache-2.0the author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Use this skill whenever the user must hold a sequence of items in working memory — phone numbers, OTP codes, account IDs, address strings, multi-step instructions, long forms, navigation menus with many items. Trigger when designing OTP / verification UIs, formatting numeric strings, breaking long forms into sections, grouping nav items, or reviewing surfaces that "have too many things at once." Chunking is one of the foundational principles in ''Universal Principles of Design'' (Lidwell, Holden, Butler 2003), grounded in Miller''s classic working-memory research.

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.

design
Filed under

Design & Media

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.md12.8 kB · preview
--- name: chunking ---
6# Chunking
7
8Chunking is the practice of grouping a long string of items into a smaller number of meaningful units, each containing a few items. The classic insight: working memory can hold only a handful of independent items, but each "item" can itself be a chunk containing several pieces. Phone numbers are easier to remember as 555-867-5309 (three chunks) than as 5558675309 (ten digits). The same principle applies broadly across UI design.
9
10## Definition (in our own words)
11
12Working memory is a small, short-lived store for the items the user is actively manipulating. Its capacity is roughly four to seven independent units. When information is presented as one long unbroken sequence, the user has to hold all of it as separate units and quickly hits the limit. When information is grouped into a few meaningful chunks, the same total content fits within the working-memory budget. Chunking is the design technique for fitting information to that budget.
13
14## Origins and research lineage
15
16- **George Miller**, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information." *Psychological Review*, 1956, vol. 63, p. 81–97. The foundational paper. Miller observed that across many tasks (recalling lists, distinguishing tones, judging quantities), people maxed out at about 7 ± 2 items. The paper introduced "chunk" as the unit of measurement: an item could itself be made up of smaller items, but it counted as one chunk if treated as a unit.
17- **Nelson Cowan**, "The Magical Number Four in Short-Term Memory: A Reconsideration of Mental Storage Capacity." *Behavioral and Brain Sciences*, 2001, vol. 24, p. 87–114. Refined Miller's estimate downward. Cowan's analysis found that when chunks are *truly* independent (not aided by rehearsal or grouping), capacity is closer to 4 ± 1 than 7 ± 2. The "magical number" is now usually given as 4.
18- **Alan Baddeley**, *Working Memory* (1986) and *Working Memory, Thought, and Action* (2007). The standard reference work on the structure and limits of working memory.
19- **Lidwell, Holden & Butler** (2003) compactly summarized the design implications and warned about misapplication: chunking is for tasks involving *memory*, not for tasks involving *scanning* (like consulting a reference list).
20
21## Why chunking matters
22
23When users must hold multiple items in mind — to dial a phone number, type a confirmation code, follow multi-step directions, complete a multi-part form — the amount they can hold determines whether they succeed. Exceeding working memory means they make mistakes, look back, or give up.
24
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md1,867 words
Files2
LicenceApache-2.0
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.

≈150
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
4,300
on trigger
The instruction body and 1 supporting file, read only when the skill fires.
2.2%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 22% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

4.5k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

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

2 files, 17.8 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md12.8 kB
  • references/working-memory-research.md5.0 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 2 files you can review in full before installing. The Apache-2.0 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.

# Chunking · 4.5k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/chunking/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/chunking" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/chunking ] || { mv .claude/skills/chunking "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/chunking" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/chunking"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add hashgraph-online/chunking

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/chunking/ 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/chunking/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/chunking" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/chunking ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/chunking "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/chunking" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/chunking" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/chunking/ 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
Referencehashgraph-online/chunking

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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Publisher
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