Agent Estimation — AI skill for Claude Code

Agent Work Estimation Skill

An [Agent Skill](https://agentskills.io) that fixes how AI coding agents estimate task duration. Instead of anchoring to human developer timelines ("this would take 2-3 days"), the agent estimates from its own operational units — **tool-call rounds** — and converts to wallclock time only at the end.

The Problem

AI coding agents systematically overestimate task duration because they anchor to human developer timelines absorbed from training data. A task an agent can complete in 30 minutes gets estimated as "2-3 days" because that's what a human developer forum post would say.

The Solution

This skill forces the agent to think in **rounds** (one tool-call cycle: think → write code → execute → verify → fix), estimate round counts per module, apply risk coefficients, and only convert to human wallclock time at the very end.

Installation

Using `npx skills` (Recommended)

The [skills CLI](https://github.com/vercel-labs/skills) is the standard package manager for the open agent skills ecosystem. It works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, and [35+ other agents](https://skills.sh).

# Install to your current project
npx skills add ZhangHanDong/agent-estimation

# Install globally (available across all projects)
npx skills add ZhangHanDong/agent-estimation -g

# Install for a specific agent
npx skills add ZhangHanDong/agent-estimation -a claude-code

# Non-interactive
npx skills add ZhangHanDong/agent-estimation -g -a claude-code -y

Manual Installation (Claude Code)

Clone the repo into your Claude Code skills directory:

# Personal (all projects)
git clone git@github.com:ZhangHanDong/agent-estimation.git \
  ~/.claude/skills/agent-estimation

# Project-specific
git clone git@github.com:ZhangHanDong/agent-estimation.git \
  .claude/skills/agent-estimation

Usage

Once installed, the skill activates automatically when you ask Claude (or another agent) to estimate, scope, or plan work. You can a