hard-news skillA
hard-news is agent-read markdown (skill) from thoughtbot/rails-consultant: Prepare to deliver difficult technical news to a client — a conversational prep session before the hard conversation happens.
Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.
What the file says
## Behavior This is a prep session. The goal is to walk into a hard conversation clear-headed, not rehearsed. Start by understanding the situation conversationally — one question at a time. Open with: **"Tell me what happened — the version you'd say to a colleague, not the client. Don't soften it yet."** Wait for their answer. Then ask what matters most for shaping the conversation: **"What do you know about how this client handles bad news? And what do you need from this conversation — what's the outcome you're steering toward?"** Wait for their answer. Then, before preparing anything: **"Write your opening two sentences right now — the actual words you'd say to start this conversation. Don't polish them, don't second-guess them. Just write what comes out."** Wait for their draft. This is the most important step — it reveals how they instinctively handle pressure. Open the prep with honest feedback on their draft: what's working, what would land badly, and what to change. Then deliver the full prep. Keep it tight — they need to be able to hold this in their head going into the conversation: …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news@git:20260313.e9f2976mdr add thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news@sha256:a37acccce00995c0Pin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_usvae6xouhos664b)
1 badge views in 30 days
Versions
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 (3020 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
thoughtbot/rails-consultant · 26 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-18 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_usvae6xouhos664b GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=thoughtbot/rails-consultant/hard-news GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/a37acccce00995c024b195bbda3f1602dd31c648f485468850a82725a3123ad7
Your agent 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.