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paste

When you want to clean and reformat content (usually from your terminal) for pasting into Slack, Notion, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, email, GitHub, or plain text. Strips ANSI codes, box-drawing chars, terminal prompt artifacts, and applies destination-specific formatting.

Install / Use

npx skills add coreyhaines31/makerskills --skill paste

Installs into whichever agent you are using.

About this skill
📄

SKILL.md

Installable skill definition

Quality Score

91/100

Supported Platforms

Universal

Our assessment of paste

paste scores 91/100 on our quality scale, 209th of 434 Communication skills we index (top 49%).

Its SKILL.md is 6.7 KB long, well organised into 12 sections with 4 code examples: a thorough specification that gives an agent plenty to work with.

It has 824 GitHub stars, a meaningful sign that others use it.

Substance
29/30
Structure
20/20
Description
15/15
Adoption
12/20
Freshness
15/15

Maintenance, license and trust

  • The repository was last updated 32 days ago, so paste is actively maintained.
  • It is released under the MIT license, a permissive license that allows use, modification and commercial use with attribution.
  • Its trust signals score 100/100, with no cautions. These come from repository metadata, not a code audit — read the skill file before letting an agent act on it.

paste compared with similar skills

All 4 of these similar skills score higher than paste; compare them before choosing.

SkillScoreStarsUpdatedFormat
paste (this skill)by coreyhaines319182432d agoSKILL.md
Agent-Reachby Panniantong10093.0k22d agoCLAUDE.md
algorithmic-artby anthropics100177.9k15d agoSKILL.md
pptxby anthropics100177.9k15d agoSKILL.md
designby nextlevelbuilder100133.6k4d agoSKILL.md

Frequently asked questions

How do I install paste?
Run npx skills add coreyhaines31/makerskills --skill paste. The install tabs above show the steps for each supported agent.
Which AI agents does paste work with?
It is written for Universal, as a SKILL.md file. Other agents that read the same format can often use it too.
Is paste safe to use?
It is MIT-licensed and scores 100/100 on trust signals. Skills are instructions an agent will follow, so read the file before installing it and do not approve commands you do not understand.
Is paste still maintained?
The repository was last updated 32 days ago, so paste is actively maintained.

name: paste description: When you want to clean and reformat content (usually from your terminal) for pasting into Slack, Notion, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, email, GitHub, or plain text. Strips ANSI codes, box-drawing chars, terminal prompt artifacts, and applies destination-specific formatting. Default input is the clipboard (read via pbpaste); default output is both the clipboard (pbcopy) and a chat preview. Triggers on "/paste", "/paste [destination]", "clean this for X," "format for slack/notion/twitter/linkedin/email/github," "render as markdown," "paste-ready," "strip formatting," "make this copy-pastable." Default destination is plain. Also scans for secrets (API keys, tokens, .env values) and warns before copying anything sensitive. metadata: version: 0.1.1

/paste — Clean content for any destination

Cleans terminal output (ANSI, box-drawing, prompt artifacts, etc.) and reformats per destination rules. Reads clipboard by default, writes back to clipboard + previews in chat.

Step 1 — Get the content

In order:

  1. If the user included content in the prompt (pasted, or referenced from earlier in the conversation), use that.
  2. Else, read clipboard: pbpaste
  3. If both empty, ask the user what to paste.

Step 2 — Parse destination

| Invocation | Destination | |---|---| | /paste | plain (default) | | /paste plain | plain | | /paste slack | slack | | /paste notion | notion | | /paste twitter or /paste x | twitter | | /paste linkedin or /paste li | linkedin | | /paste email | email (plain) | | /paste email rich or /paste email html | email (rich/HTML) | | /paste github or /paste gh | github | | /paste markdown or /paste md | markdown render | | /paste html | render to HTML file + open in browser |

If ambiguous, ask. Per-destination rules live in references/destinations.md.

Step 3 — Scan for secrets

Before any cleaning or copying, scan against patterns in references/secret-patterns.md.

If any match:

  1. Stop. Don't copy yet.
  2. Report what was detected with the value masked (first 4 + last 4 chars only — e.g. sk-12...wxyz).
  3. Ask: "Spotted [type] in the content. Continue, redact (replace with [REDACTED]), or abort?"
  4. Default to abort if no clear answer.

Step 4 — Universal cleaning

Strip from the content:

  • ANSI escape codes — \x1b\[[0-9;]*[a-zA-Z] and related (color codes, cursor movement, screen control)
  • Box-drawing chars — ╭ ─ ╮ │ ╰ ╯ ╞ ╡ ╤ ╧ ┌ ┐ └ ┘ ├ ┤ ┬ ┴ ┼ ━ ┃ ┏ ┓ ┗ ┛ etc. Replace with simpler equivalents (-, |) or remove entirely depending on context.
  • Terminal prompt artifacts — leading $ , > , ❯ , % , # (when first non-whitespace on a line that looks like a shell prompt)
  • Carriage returns (\r) — replace with \n or delete
  • Trailing whitespace per line
  • Excess blank lines — collapse 3+ consecutive blank lines to 2

Step 5 — Apply destination rules

Read references/destinations.md and apply the relevant transform.

Step 6 — Output

| Destination | Output behavior | |---|---| | plain / slack / notion / twitter / linkedin / email / github | (a) Show preview in a code fence in chat. (b) Copy clean version to clipboard via pbcopy. | | email rich | Render to HTML, write to /tmp/paste-<timestamp>.html, open it in browser. Skip clipboard (the user copies from browser to preserve rich text). | | markdown | Render the cleaned markdown directly in chat (Claude Code renders it). Also copy raw markdown to clipboard. Offer: "Open as HTML too?" — if yes, write and open. | | html | Render to HTML, write to /tmp/paste-<timestamp>.html, open it. Skip clipboard. |

After output, report a one-line summary of what was cleaned (e.g., "Stripped 12 ANSI codes, 4 box-drawing chars, 1 prompt artifact. Character count: 248 / 280 (X).").

Length warnings

Twitter and LinkedIn have practical limits. the user said "let me trim" — don't refuse or auto-truncate.

  • Twitter/X: warn if >280 chars. Note the overage.
  • LinkedIn: warn if >400 chars (comfort line, not hard limit).
  • Other destinations: no length warning.

URL handling for social destinations

If the content has URLs and destination is twitter or linkedin:

  • Surface the URLs separately (don't include them in the body)
  • Remind the user: links go in a first comment (LinkedIn) or reply (X), not the body
  • See makerskills:jab-hook and ~/.claude/memory/feedback_social_link_placement.md

Examples

/paste slack

→ Reads clipboard, strips ANSI, converts **bold** to *bold*, copies to clipboard, shows preview.

/paste twitter
[pasted error log]

→ Uses pasted content (ignores clipboard), strips everything, warns at 412/280 chars, copies, asks if the user wants to trim or pick a different destination.

/paste html
[pasted markdown table]

→ Renders table as HTML, opens in browser. the user selects + copies into Notion/email with formatting preserved.

/paste
[pasted output with sk-anthropic-key in it]

→ Stops. "Spotted what looks like an Anthropic API key: sk-an...3kf9. Continue, redact, or abort?"

Composes with

  • jab-hook — clean output for pasting into Typefully drafts when the MCP path doesn't fit; also enforces the link-placement rule for X/LinkedIn destinations
  • social-fetch — clean a fetched post before quoting it in a draft or newsletter
  • second-brain — paste output can be captured cleanly into raw/note-<slug>.md for future compilation
  • watch-video — transcript / summary output often flows through paste for platform-specific reformatting

Notes on quality

  • Secret detection runs first, always. Before any formatting or destination logic, paste scans for sk-*, AKIA*, xoxb-*, JWT-shaped strings, and long-hex tokens. Prompts before proceeding on any hit. Better to false-positive occasionally than to leak a real key.
  • Destination-aware transforms, not one-size-fits-all. Slack wants *bold*; LinkedIn wants unicode-styled bold; email wants HTML. Same input, 9 different valid outputs. The destination flag is not optional.
  • ANSI codes get stripped for every destination. Terminal escapes (\033[31m etc.) render as garbage everywhere except the source terminal.
  • Character limits are enforced, not warnings. X at 280, LinkedIn at 3000, Twitter at 25000 — paste refuses to copy over-limit output and offers a trim strategy.
  • Links go in first comments for social destinations — not the body. Enforced when destination is twitter or linkedin. Documented in ~/.claude/memory/feedback_social_link_placement.md.
  • HTML destination opens in a browser tab, not the clipboard. Formatted tables + code blocks need a rendered surface to select-and-copy from with formatting preserved. Copying raw HTML to the clipboard produces garbage in Notion/email.

Related Skills

View on GitHub
GitHub Stars824
CategoryCommunication
Updated1mo ago
Forks67

Trust signals

100/100

From repository metadata: license, adoption, age and documentation. Not a code audit — see the Safety scan above for what the skill file itself contains.

No cautions