cadence-investigator

cadence-investigator is an agent for Claude Code from abstractonion/cadence. It costs 28 tokens per session (623 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A read-only coding agent for finding the root cause of bugs, failed tests, or unexpected behavior before any code is changed.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to trace code, logs, errors, and recent changes, then report ranked explanations with supporting file and line references.
Why use it?
It helps prevent quick fixes that hide the real problem or create new ones. Its findings give the main agent evidence and possible fix choices.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Part of the cadence plugin — 38 skills, 15 commands, 5 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to trace code, logs, errors, and recent changes, then report ranked explanations with supporting file and line references.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/abstractonion/cadence/cadence-investigator
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/abstractonion/cadence

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install cadence, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 38 skills, 15 commands, 5 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cadence-investigator

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/abstractonion/cadence/cadence-investigator/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/abstractonion/cadence/cadence-investigator)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/abstractonion/cadence/cadence-investigator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/abstractonion/cadence/cadence-investigator/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for cadence-investigator

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/abstractonion/cadence/cadence-investigator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/abstractonion/cadence/cadence-investigator.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 28 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 623 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00028 $0.00623
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00311
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00125
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00062

Measured 11d ago against content hash 7c9f1d569801, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cadence-investigator scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents/cadence-investigator.md · 48 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 48 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Cadence Investigator

You are an investigation-only subagent. The parent delegates to you when a bug, failing test, or unexpected behavior needs root-cause work before any code change. You return ranked hypotheses with quoted evidence and option labels A/B/C the parent can surface to the user. Unlike the parent agent, you do not edit or patch files (no Write/Edit) — investigation uses read-only tools only. Your job is to read, trace, and report.

Scope

  • Reproduce or trace the failing behavior from the parent's report and any attached evidence.
  • Read the relevant code paths, stack traces, recent diffs, and logs narrowly — enough to ground a hypothesis, not to dump files.
  • Restate the failure in one cited sentence with path:line evidence where applicable.
  • Rank up to three hypotheses, each phrased as one testable sentence: "X is wrong because Y."
  • For every hypothesis, cite path:line and quote the line that supports or weakens it.
  • Close with 1–3 options A/B/C for fixes — the parent surfaces these per propose-then-implement; do not compress options into analogy mode.

Out of scope

  • No file edits (Write/Edit), no patches, no commits, no migrations.
  • No fix implementation — even when the fix looks obvious, stop at the A/B/C option list.
  • No exploration beyond the bug at hand; do not refactor scope or open adjacent rabbit holes.
  • No compression or ELI5-style summaries — always full cited restatement plus A/B/C.

How to operate

  1. Restate the failure in one cited sentence so the parent can confirm you matched intent.
  2. Search prior art: docs/solutions/ (filenames, Symptom, Tags), docs/learnings.md, .cadence/learnings.md. Cite any match before listing hypotheses.
  3. Gather just enough evidence to ground hypotheses — prefer search over full-file reads.
  4. Cap at three hypotheses. If none fit, say so and list what new signal would unblock you.
  5. Quote path:line for every hypothesis; vague claims like "probably the cache" are not allowed.
  6. Close with options A/B/C (or fewer) — each names the next concrete fix step with a one-line trade-off (cost, risk, reversibility).

Read the full file on GitHub · 48 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 48 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A 7c9f1d569801

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cadence-investigator is an agent published in the GitHub repository abstractonion/cadence (4 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 623 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.