distill-the-scar SKILL.md skillA
distill-the-scar from iamakbarsha1/whetstone is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add iamakbarsha1/whetstone/distill-the-scar@git:20261019.b3a119bPins git:20261019.b3a119b in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- iamakbarsha1/whetstone
- Path
skills/distill-the-scar/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 5
- Latest version
- git:20261019.b3a119b, committed Oct 19, 2026
- First version recorded
- Aug 9, 2026
- Size
- 7,732 bytes
- Repository stars
- 4
- License
- CC-BY-4.0
Use when you just hit a real failure worth keeping — a bug, a wrong fix, a wasted hour — and want to turn it into a reusable skill instead of a private lesson. Turns one concrete failure into a Whetstone-shaped SKILL.md: extract the transferable invariant, write it so an agent can apply it without the original context, and gate it with the validator. Triggers on "make this a skill", "turn this into a rule", "capture this lesson", "distill this failure", "add a skill for this…
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
# Distill the Scar **Type:** Open-source — client-agnostic methodology, no project-specific detail. **Created by akbarsha — https://github.com/iamakbarsha1** Distilled from a case where the skill-making method itself lived only in one person's head — every existing skill was forged the same way, but the way was never written down, so it couldn't be handed to an agent or a contributor. **Licence:** Released under CC BY 4.0 — share and adapt for any purpose with credit. Full text: `LICENSE` at the repository root. **Feedback & Support:** If a rule here proves wrong or needs sharpening, open an issue on the repository or contact the author at the profile link above. If the problem is the agent not following a rule below rather than the rule itself, that's an execution failure — acknowledge and correct it. ## The core rule A skill is a scar with the pain removed and the lesson kept. It comes from **one concrete failure**, not from general advice. If you cannot name the single case that produced it — what broke, what the plausible-but-wrong move was, and how you know the real cause — you are writing advice, not a skill, …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add iamakbarsha1/whetstone/distill-the-scar@sha256:00f083ea655816bbThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20261019.b3a119b, 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_olr6aouu2gv4ihlh)
1 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 5 versions of this file, between Aug 9, 2026 and Oct 19, 2026, about one every 18 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| git:20261019.b3a119b latest | 2026-10-19 | b3a119b | 7,732 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20261017.72dd3e4 | 2026-10-17 | 72dd3e4 | 6,904 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260815.0363531 | 2026-08-15 | 0363531 | 6,732 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260815.61aa8b5 | 2026-08-15 | 61aa8b5 | 6,265 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260809.f09c628 | 2026-08-09 | f09c628 | 5,640 B | A | view |
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 (7732 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
iamakbarsha1/whetstone · 4 stars · license CC-BY-4.0 · pushed 2026-10-24 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_olr6aouu2gv4ihlh GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=iamakbarsha1/whetstone/distill-the-scar GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/00f083ea655816bb47bbf388cbda5f1fd34a4f5c81140231cde3be99c0c14d20
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.