Readout

Turns investigations into self-contained HTML documents that land in ~/.readouts with an auto-maintained index. Works two ways: snapshot mode writes up whatever you've been discussing, research mode starts fresh and digs through the codebase to answer specific questions before documenting. The skill acts as orchestrator, asking a few scoping questions if the request is vague, then spawns a child agent to do the actual mining and writing so your main conversation stays clean. Output follows a canonical template with embedded code snippets and proper references. Use it when you want something readable weeks later without needing the original context, or when "write this up" is easier than opening an editor.

skills.sh installs: 17.7K
GitHub stars: 684
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add warpdotdev/common-skills --skill readout --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Readout

A readout turns an investigation into a durable HTML document someone can read weeks later without any of the original context. It starts one of two ways:

Snapshot mode — invoked mid-conversation ("write this up"): the conversation's accumulated findings are the source material.
Research mode — invoked fresh ("/readout on how github webhook events are processed in the server"): there is no conversation to mine, so the investigation itself is part of the job.

Either way, invoking this skill is a side task. Your job as the main agent is to sharpen the scope, launch a child agent with a good brief, and get out of the way — the child does the mining/research and the writing, keeping that (often large) work out of your context window.

Orchestrator workflow

1. Sharpen the scope — ask before launching

A vague brief produces a vague document. Before launching you should be able to list the specific questions the document will answer; if you can't, interview the user first:

SKILL.md on GitHub