Mapping — natural (spatial and physical) Agent Skill

Apply natural mapping — the strongest form of mapping, in which the spatial position, motion, or shape of a control directly corresponds…

Context cost
4.3k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
2 files · 17.3 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

Apply natural mapping — the strongest form of mapping, in which the spatial position, motion, or shape of a control directly corresponds to what it affects. Use when designing physical control panels, in-screen controls that affect specific regions of a UI, chart legends, multi-target remote controls, vehicle dashboards, or any situation where the user must connect "this control" to "that affected thing." A natural mapping is one a first-time user can predict without instruction. When the form factor allows it, natural mapping is essentially free correctness.

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.md10.0 kB · preview
--- name: mapping-natural ---
6# Mapping — natural (spatial and physical)
7
8Natural mapping is the form of mapping that requires no learning. The control is positioned where the affected element is, or moves the way the affected element moves, or is shaped like the affected element. The user does not have to think; they reach.
9
10Natural mapping comes in two forms.
11
12**Spatial correspondence.** The control's position in space matches the affected element's position in space. Stove knobs in a 2×2 grid that mirror the burners. The seat-position controls on a Mercedes-Benz, shaped like a tiny seat — push the headrest forward to recline, push the seat back forward to slide forward. A chart legend whose entries appear in the same vertical order as the data lines they describe, so the topmost legend entry corresponds to the topmost line. A row of speaker volume controls arranged left-to-right in the same order as the speakers in the room.
13
14**Physical analogy.** The control's motion or shape corresponds to a physical action whose meaning is universally understood — usually because it mimics gravity, force, or direction. Up = more, down = less. Right = forward in time, left = backward. Clockwise = increase, counterclockwise = decrease (in cultures that read left-to-right; the convention is local but extremely strong). Pinch out = zoom in. Pull a slider toward you = grab and bring closer. These mappings are not innate, but they're embodied — users feel them rather than think them — and breaking them generates immediate confusion that no amount of labeling will fix.
15
16## Recognizing when natural mapping is available
17
18The form factor either supports natural mapping or it doesn't. A four-burner stove with the burners in a 2×2 grid and physical room for knobs in a 2×2 grid: spatial mapping available. A cooktop with knobs along the front edge and burners behind: spatial mapping not directly available; you'll have to weaken to a labeled or angled approximation. A horizontal slider for an inherently vertical quantity (height, depth, intensity from low-to-high): natural mapping mismatched; consider rotating the slider or changing the metaphor.
19
20The question to ask early in a design is: **what is the spatial or physical structure of the thing being controlled, and can the controls share that structure?**
21
22## Worked examples
23
24### A four-burner stove control panel
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md1,629 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.
4,175
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

4.3k 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, 17.3 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md10.0 kB
  • references/spatial-correspondence.md7.3 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.

# Mapping — natural (spatial and physical) · 4.3k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical ] || { mv .claude/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add hashgraph-online/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical

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/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical/ 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/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical/ 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. It appears as mapping-natural in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical.

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/mapping-natural-spatial-and-physical

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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