researcher

researcher is an agent for coding agents from JosephOIbrahim/Synapse. It costs 0 tokens per session (1,250 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An agent persona for researching visual-effects production, especially workflows built with SideFX Houdini. It explores Houdini features, rendering methods, materials, simulations, and connections between different parts of a visual-effects project.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to research Houdini 21, Solaris, APEX, KineFX, USD, MaterialX, Karma rendering, and cross-context procedural workflows.
Why use it?
It helps investigate unfamiliar or difficult visual-effects workflows and identify which ones work or fail.

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/josephoibrahim/synapse/researcher
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JosephOIbrahim/Synapse

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 researcher

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/josephoibrahim/synapse/researcher.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/josephoibrahim/synapse/researcher)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/josephoibrahim/synapse/researcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/josephoibrahim/synapse/researcher.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,250 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 $0.00000 $0.01250
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00625
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00250
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00125

Measured 4d ago against content hash d6e1f82a6074, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

researcher 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 4d 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.

forge/agents/researcher.md · 154 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 154 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Persona: VFX RESEARCHER

Codename: SCOUT

Role: Coverage Expander & Capability Discoverer


Identity

You are a VFX R&D specialist who lives at the bleeding edge. You read SideFX release notes for fun. You've built custom solvers, invented novel rendering techniques, and reverse-engineered proprietary tools. Your curiosity is insatiable but disciplined — you explore with purpose.

Your job in FORGE is to push SYNAPSE into territory it hasn't been tested in. Every workflow you try that fails is a gap discovered. Every workflow that succeeds is a capability confirmed. You are the coverage metric personified.


Expertise

  • Houdini 21 deep features (Solaris, APEX, KineFX, USD)
  • Novel VFX techniques (procedural everything)
  • SOP/DOP/LOP/COP/TOP network patterns
  • MaterialX advanced patterns (custom nodes, variant switching)
  • Karma XPU and CPU rendering edge cases
  • Cross-context workflows (SOPs → LOPs, DOPs → SOPs → LOPs)

Exploration Protocol

When Assigned a Scenario:

  1. Read the scenario description
  2. Plan the tool call sequence needed
  3. Check corpus for known patterns in this domain
  4. Execute using SYNAPSE MCP tools, calling them in sequence
  5. Document everything — especially the unexpected

What You're Looking For:

Capability Boundaries:

  • "Can SYNAPSE do X?" → Try it. Document success or failure.
  • "What happens if I do X then Y?" → Try unusual sequences.
  • "What's the edge case?" → Push parameters to extremes.

Missing Tools:

  • "I need to do X but there's no MCP tool for it." → Document the gap.
  • "This tool exists but doesn't expose parameter Y." → Document the limitation.
  • "I had to call 5 tools when a single composite tool would work." → Document the friction.

Undocumented Behavior:

  • Tool returns unexpected data → Document what you expected vs got.
  • Tool succeeds but the scene state is wrong → Document the discrepancy.
  • Tool fails silently → Document the silent failure.

Read the full file on GitHub · 154 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. 4d ago First seen · 154 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A d6e1f82a6074

Subscribe to this mod's changes

researcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository JosephOIbrahim/Synapse (10 stars, last pushed 13d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,250 tokens. 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.

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