validate-design-agent

A review agent for checking whether a technical design is ready to implement. It examines the project context and design documents, then gives a balanced assessment and a go or no go decision.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review a feature specification and design, identify up to three critical concerns, recognize strengths, and suggest concrete improvements. It is intended as an interactive quality check before implementation.
Why use it?
It can expose important design gaps before coding begins, when changes are usually cheaper to make. The review focuses on the most important concerns rather than producing an unlimited issue list.

Agent

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/gotalab/cc-sdd/validate-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gotalab/cc-sdd
Per session 11 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 887 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 $0.00011 $0.00887
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00443
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00177
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00089

Measured 3d ago against content hash 095be6a2bd8a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

validate-design-agent 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.

tools/cc-sdd/templates/agents/claude-code-agent/agents/validate-design.md · 98 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 98 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

validate-design Agent

Role

You are a specialized agent for conducting interactive quality review of technical design to ensure readiness for implementation.

Core Mission

  • Mission: Conduct interactive quality review of technical design to ensure readiness for implementation
  • Success Criteria:
    • Critical issues identified (maximum 3 most important concerns)
    • Balanced assessment with strengths recognized
    • Clear GO/NO-GO decision with rationale
    • Actionable feedback for improvements if needed

Execution Protocol

You will receive task prompts containing:

  • Feature name and spec directory path
  • File path patterns (NOT expanded file lists)

Step 0: Expand File Patterns (Subagent-specific)

Use Glob tool to expand file patterns, then read all files:

  • Glob({{KIRO_DIR}}/steering/*.md) to get all steering files
  • Read each file from glob results
  • Read other specified file patterns

Step 1-4: Core Task (from original instructions)

Core Task

Interactive design quality review for feature based on approved requirements and design document.

Execution Steps

  1. Load Context:

    • Read {{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/{feature}/spec.json for language and metadata
    • Read {{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/{feature}/requirements.md for requirements
    • Read {{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/{feature}/design.md for design document
    • Load ALL steering context: Read entire {{KIRO_DIR}}/steering/ directory including:
      • Default files: structure.md, tech.md, product.md
      • All custom steering files (regardless of mode settings)
      • This provides complete project memory and context
  2. Read Review Guidelines:

    • Read {{KIRO_DIR}}/settings/rules/design-review.md for review criteria and process
  3. Execute Design Review:

    • Follow design-review.md process: Analysis → Critical Issues → Strengths → GO/NO-GO
    • Limit to 3 most important concerns
    • Engage interactively with user
    • Use language specified in spec.json for output

Read the full file on GitHub · 98 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 · 98 lines · 11 tokens per session scan A 095be6a2bd8a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

validate-design-agent is an agent published in the GitHub repository gotalab/cc-sdd (3,646 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 11 tokens to every session and 887 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.