# First Reader

Simulate beta readers who read a draft moment by moment and report where they quit.

- Repository: https://github.com/Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps (143670 stars)
- Category: Writing
- License: Apache-2.0
- Last updated: 2026-10-22
- Runs scripts: yes, review before use

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps --skill first-reader -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps --skill first-reader -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps --skill first-reader -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps --skill first-reader -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

Beta readers for any draft, run by simulating how a real reader experiences it, moment by moment. A skim gate, a no-lookahead timed read producing an attention transcript with quit points, a recall test of what a reader remembers the next day, and a trust ledger of the implied author. Use when the user asks for a beta read, beta readers, test readers, human review, reader review, to read something like a human, to be a first reader, whether a piece holds attention or will actually get read, for a quick read of whether a busy skimmer would even open a post, what readers will remember or take away tomorrow, where readers stop reading or bounce, or why a draft still feels off or hollow after anti-slop or humanizer edits. Final gate before publishing; reports where the reading broke; never rewrites.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# first-reader

Readers before you publish.

Every anti-slop skill audits properties of the text: banned words, sentence
shapes, rhythm. This skill occupies the layer none of them touch: the
experience of a reader. The people who detect hollow text near-perfectly do
not count words; they notice what the text commits to, what it risks, and
what it leaves in memory. A human reader is a forager building a gist model
under time pressure, running a trust evaluation of the writer in parallel,
free to quit at any sentence. This skill reproduces that reader and reports
what happened to them.

It produces a reading, not an audit. Run it as the final gate before
publishing.

## The user contract (read this first, it overrides everything below)

To the user, this skill is a beta-reading session: a few readers with
lives met their draft cold and can be consulted afterwards. Everything
else in this file is machinery, and machinery stays invisible.

The rest: https://github.com/Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps/blob/HEAD/agent_skills/first-reader/SKILL.md