study-repos-first SKILL.md skillA
study-repos-first from lossless-group/lossless-agent-skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add lossless-group/lossless-agent-skills/study-repos-first@git:20260507.cfef343Pins git:20260507.cfef343 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- lossless-group/lossless-agent-skills
- Path
study-repos-first/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260507.cfef343, committed May 7, 2026
- Size
- 9,686 bytes
- Repository stars
- 4
- License
- MIT
The Lossless Group's discipline of pinning a curated collection of upstream repos (a "study") around a domain question *before* designing or coding in that domain. Use when starting work that touches conventions, file formats, schemas, protocols, or any decision where prior art exists; when the user mentions "study", "studies/", "reference collection", "prior art", "pin a submodule", or names of existing studies (open-specs-and-standards, memory-layers-for-agents…
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Study Repos First > A *study* is a curated reference collection — a directory of upstream specs, prior art, reference implementations, papers, or codebases — pinned as git submodules **before** a decision is made or a feature is built. It is not a project (it ships nothing) and not documentation (it lives, it's checked-out code). It is a reading list with structure, pinned so it never rots out from under us. This skill is **foundational and iterative**. It will be expanded as we work through real studies together. Treat the contents as the current best understanding, not the final word. ## When to use this skill - Starting any task in `ai-labs/` (or any pseudomonorepo) where the question is about **conventions** — naming, file shapes, folder layouts, schemas, protocols, manifest formats — rather than novel logic - The user says "let's study X", "what's the prior art on X", "how do other projects handle X", "pin a reference", "add a submodule under studies/" - A design decision is on the table and the temptation is to let the agent fill in patterns from training data - Scaffolding a new `studies/<topic-slug>/` directory …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add lossless-group/lossless-agent-skills/study-repos-first@sha256:d8d0944935ed698eThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260507.cfef343, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_fd63fpu6he4xfjz3)
1 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on May 7, 2026.
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (9686 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
lossless-group/lossless-agent-skills · 4 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-11-02 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_fd63fpu6he4xfjz3 GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=lossless-group/lossless-agent-skills/study-repos-first GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/d8d0944935ed698eeb1dce79e3e6bab26f03f72cd0199e2d78245a107466df6c
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.