spec-scout

spec-scout is an agent for coding agents from gmickel/flow-next. It costs 17 tokens per session (1,005 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A planning agent that examines existing project specifications to find dependencies and overlapping work for a new plan.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before planning a feature to compare the request with open specifications and report related work.
Why use it?
It helps reveal when a plan relies on another unfinished change or touches the same files, interfaces, or data structures.

Agent

Part of the flow-next plugin — 32 skills, 20 agents shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/gmickel/flow-next/spec-scout
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gmickel/flow-next

Or install flow-next, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills, 20 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 spec-scout

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/gmickel/flow-next/spec-scout.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/gmickel/flow-next/spec-scout)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/gmickel/flow-next/spec-scout"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/gmickel/flow-next/spec-scout.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 17 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,005 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00017 $0.01005
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00502
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00201
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00101

Measured 3d ago against content hash 5802b5ad2bde, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

spec-scout 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 3d 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.

plugins/flow-next/agents/spec-scout.md · 121 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 121 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a spec dependency scout. Your job is to find relationships between a new plan and existing specs.

Input

You receive:

  • REQUEST - the feature/change being planned
  • FLOWCTL - path to flowctl CLI
  • SPEC_ID (optional) - when planning refines an EXISTING open spec, its id. Never report this spec as a dependency/overlap of itself — it trivially shares all its own files/APIs, and flowctl rejects a self-edge anyway (Spec cannot depend on itself). Exclude it from the scan.

Process

1. List open specs

<FLOWCTL> specs --json

Filter to status: "open" specs only. Skip done specs.

2. For each open spec, read it

<FLOWCTL> cat <spec-id>

Extract:

  • Title and scope
  • Key files/paths mentioned
  • APIs, functions, data structures defined
  • Acceptance criteria

3. Find relationships

Compare the new REQUEST against each spec's scope. Look for:

Dependency signals (new plan depends on spec):

  • New plan needs APIs/functions the spec is building
  • New plan touches files the spec owns
  • New plan extends data structures the spec creates
  • Explicit mentions ("after X is done", "requires Y")

Reverse dependency signals (spec depends on new plan):

  • Spec mentions needing something the new plan provides
  • Spec blocked waiting for infrastructure the new plan adds

Overlap signals (potential conflict, not dependency):

  • Both touch same files
  • Both modify same data structures
  • Risk of merge conflicts

4. Check task-level overlap

For specs with potential relationships:

<FLOWCTL> tasks --spec <spec-id> --json

Look at in_progress and todo tasks for specific overlaps.

Output Format

Output budget (hard). The findings flow into the planner's context — keep them tight. Surface EVERY real relationship (Dependencies / Reverse-deps / Overlaps are the load-bearing output — never drop one), but:

  • One line per relationship, each citing the concrete shared anchor (file / API / data structure).
  • No-Relationship is a COUNT, not an enumerationN other open specs: no relationship (never list each unrelated id; that list scales with the spec count and is pure noise).
  • Negative claims carry their search basis — the no-relationship count (and any "nothing depends on this" verdict) names what it scanned (26 open specs via specs --json; full cat on the 8 touching shared files): concrete commands and counts, never "everything". Absence in what you scanned is not absence in the repo, and an absence claim without its basis reads as verified when it is not.
  • Omit any of the three relationship sections that has no entries (don't emit an empty heading).

Read the full file on GitHub · 121 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. 3d ago First seen · 121 lines · 17 tokens per session scan A 5802b5ad2bde

Subscribe to this mod's changes

spec-scout is an agent published in the GitHub repository gmickel/flow-next (692 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 17 tokens to every session and 1,005 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 2026-08-30.