Ground First
Use BEFORE acting whenever getting it wrong has real cost — in ANY domain, not just infra. Fire for complex or multi-step work; irreversible or hard-to-undo actions; anything touching production, shared state, real user data, money/payments, security/credentials, schema/migrations, external APIs/integrations, concurrency, or a change rippling across many call sites; and debugging where acting on the wrong root cause makes it worse. Judge the REAL work from your own understanding, not keywords — a request can say "payment" or "migrate" or "refactor" and be a one-line cosmetic edit, while a plain-sounding one is deeply consequential. It splits what you KNOW from what you're ASSUMING, surfaces the silent failure modes, and verifies your riskiest assumptions before the irreversible step. Do NOT use for trivial reversible edits — renames of a local symbol, typos, comments, formatting, cosmetic tweaks.
Security AStatic scan found no risk patternsHow grading works ›
From the source SKILL.md
You were about to act on something where the cost of a wrong assumption is high. Stop and ground first. This skill produces one artifact — a Grounding Brief — and then drives the read-only probes that verify it.
What this skill does
Ground First is a community-contributed Claude Code skill in the security-misc sub-category. It ships as a SKILL.md file that Claude Code auto-discovers under ~/.claude/skills/ground-first/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.
Who uses this skill
The Ground First Claude Code skill is built for security engineers, penetration testers, DevSecOps practitioners, and development teams hardening codebases and infrastructure. It's part of ClaudSkills (also referred to as Claude Skills or Claude Code Skills) — the open community-curated registry of 154,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).
How to install
Free
Manual install (2 steps)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/ground-first
curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/ground-first/SKILL.md \
-o ~/.claude/skills/ground-first/SKILL.md
Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/ground-first/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.
Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/ground-first/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\ground-first\SKILL.md on Windows. See the full install guide for step-by-step instructions.
Telegram
📱 Install from your phone or desktop Telegram
Open @claudskills_bot on Telegram, tap Open Desktop App, and the desktop app installs this skill for you. Or share the bot link with a colleague — they get the same one-tap install. Learn more →
Pro
One-click install via the desktop app
The ClaudSkills desktop app installs any skill directly into ~/.claude/skills/ with one click — no terminal required. Pro starts at $9/mo or $149 lifetime.
Pro
For the full experience including quality scoring and one-click install features for each skill — upgrade to Pro.
Frequently asked questions
How do I install the Ground First Claude Code skill?
Install via the ClaudSkills desktop app (one click) or copy
SKILL.md from the source repository to
~/.claude/skills/ground-first/SKILL.md and restart Claude Code. Both flows are detailed at
claudskills.com/install/.
What does the Ground First skill do?
Use BEFORE acting whenever getting it wrong has real cost — in ANY domain, not just infra. Fire for complex or multi-step work; irreversible or hard-to-undo actions; anything touching production, shared state, real user data, money/payments, security/credentials, schema/migrations, external APIs/integrations, concurrency, or a change rippling across many call sites; and debugging where acting on the wrong root cause makes it worse. Judge the REAL work from your own understanding, not keywords — a request can say "payment" or "migrate" or "refactor" and be a one-line cosmetic edit, while a plain-sounding one is deeply consequential. It splits what you KNOW from what you're ASSUMING, surfaces the silent failure modes, and verifies your riskiest assumptions before the irreversible step. Do NOT use for trivial reversible edits — renames of a local symbol, typos, comments, formatting, cosmetic tweaks.
Is this skill free to install?
Yes. ClaudSkills is an open registry — every skill keeps its source repository's license, and manual install via copy is free. ClaudSkills Pro ($9/mo, $79/yr, or $149 one-time) adds one-click install via the desktop app and a multi-signal Quality Score.
When should I use the Ground First skill?
Use Ground First when your Claude Code task falls under the Security category — specifically in the security misc area. Claude Code auto-discovers installed skills and invokes the right one based on the task description, so you can also ask Claude directly (e.g. "use Ground First" or describe the task and let Claude pick). Browse related skills at
/category/security/.
What is a Claude Code skill and how does the Ground First skill fit in?
A Claude Code skill is a
SKILL.md file that lives under
~/.claude/skills/<name>/ and tells the Claude Code CLI agent how to perform a specific task (instructions, prompts, allowed tools). Skills are auto-discovered at session start. Ground First is one of 67,000+ skills indexed in the open ClaudSkills catalog, classified under the Security category. Learn more at
/learn/what-is-a-claude-skill/.
Attribution & license
Cite this skill
If you reference this skill in a blog post, paper, or documentation, you can cite it as:
APA
88plug. (2026). Ground First [Claude Code skill]. ClaudSkills. https://claudskills.com/skills/ground-first/
BibTeX
@misc{ground-first-2026,
author = {88plug},
title = {Ground First [Claude Code skill]},
year = {2026},
publisher = {ClaudSkills},
url = {https://claudskills.com/skills/ground-first/}
}Embed this skill
Promote, attribute, or link this skill from your own README, blog post, or documentation. All three snippets are free to use — no sign-up, no API key. More distribution surfaces →
Badge
[](https://claudskills.com/skills/ground-first/?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=readme&utm_campaign=skill_badge)
<script>
<script src="https://claudskills.com/embed/ground-first.js" async></script>
<iframe>
<iframe src="https://claudskills.com/embed/ground-first.html" width="100%" height="160" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" title="ClaudSkills: Ground First"></iframe>
Security scan
Grade A · scanned 2026-07-20 — free static scan against the OWASP Agentic Skills Top 10.
No risk patterns were found in any of the ten OWASP-aligned categories. How grading works ›
- ✓ Prompt injection
- ✓ Data exfiltration
- ✓ Supply chain
- ✓ Reverse shell
- ✓ Credentials
- ✓ Execution
- ✓ Filesystem
- ✓ Persistence
- ✓ Obfuscation
- ✓ Network
Show this grade on your repo (click to copy):
[](https://claudskills.com/skills/ground-first/#security)
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