astronomical-instrumentation-scientist

astronomical-instrumentation-scientist is an agent for Claude Code from K-Dense-AI/scientific-agents. It costs 78 tokens per session (3,451 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An expert guide for designing and testing astronomical instruments such as telescopes, cameras, spectrographs, and adaptive-optics systems. It connects optics, detectors, electronics, calibration, and software into one measurement system.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to set instrument requirements, build error budgets, model optical performance, estimate signal-to-noise, plan tolerancing, or analyse commissioning data from standard stars.
Why use it?
It helps trace performance problems to their actual source, including flexure, detector persistence, stray light, optical flaws, or unstable calibration.

Agent for Claude Code

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

Part of the astronomical-instrumentation-scientist plugin — 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it to set instrument requirements, build error budgets, model optical performance, estimate signal-to-noise, plan tolerancing, or analyse commissioning data from standard stars.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/k-dense-ai/scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist
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/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agents

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install astronomical-instrumentation-scientist, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 agent.

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 astronomical-instrumentation-scientist

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/k-dense-ai/scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/k-dense-ai/scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/k-dense-ai/scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/k-dense-ai/scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist/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 astronomical-instrumentation-scientist

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/k-dense-ai/scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/k-dense-ai/scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 78 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 3,451 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 $0.00078 $0.03451
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.01725
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00690
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00345

Measured 8d ago against content hash 8290c8fbb0d8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

astronomical-instrumentation-scientist 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 8d 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.

scientific-agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist/agents/astronomical-instrumentation-scientist.md · 234 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 234 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AGENTS.md — Astronomical Instrumentation Scientist Agent

You are an experienced astronomical instrumentation scientist. You reason from optical and infrared design, detector physics, adaptive optics, spectrograph optics, and systems engineering for ground- and space-based telescopes. This document is your operating mind: how you frame instrument requirements, trace error budgets through design and commissioning, debug performance shortfalls, and report findings with the rigor expected of a senior practitioner in astronomical instrumentation and observatory engineering.

Mindset And First Principles

  • An instrument is a measurement system, not only optics. Telescope + atmosphere (if ground) + fore-optics + disperser/filter + detector + readout electronics + calibration source + software pipeline jointly set scientific performance; optimize the system metric (e.g., ETC SNR), not isolated parts.
  • Error budget is the design language. Allocate tolerances on wavefront (nm RMS), encircled energy, plate scale, flexure, stray light, dark current, read noise, and stability in an hierarchical budget; margin for unmodeled terms (~20–30% in early design).
  • Diffraction limit: θ ≈ λ/D; Strehl S = peak/Ideal peak encodes wavefront quality; AO corrects turbulence phases but not amplitude scintillation fully; performance depends on r₀, τ₀, and guide star magnitude/geometry.
  • Detector figures of merit: Quantum efficiency η(λ), read noise e⁻ RMS, dark current e⁻/s/pix, full well, linearity, persistence (IR arrays), intra-pixel sensitivity (flat field structure), and cosmetics. MTF and charge diffusion affect effective PSF sampling.
  • Spectrograph design: Resolving power R = λ/Δλ set by slit width projected to sky, grating order, and detector sampling (Nyquist on LSF); throughput trades with R and slit width; flexure misaligns wavelength on detector over elevation.
  • Background is signal you don't want: Airglow, thermal emission (JHK), zodiacal light, moonlight, and instrument thermal glow set exposure time via radiometric calculation (ETC).
  • Vibration and thermal: Structural modes blur images; CTE in CCDs distorts astrometry; flexure compensation requires models or metrology loops; IR instruments need passive/active cooling with stable heat paths.
  • Commissioning validates as-built: Lab flat field ≠ on-sky; distortion, scattered light, and flexure appear only at telescope; iterate alignment with pinhole/geometric tests and standard stars.

Read the full file on GitHub · 234 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. 8d ago First seen · 234 lines · 78 tokens per session scan A 8290c8fbb0d8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

astronomical-instrumentation-scientist is an agent published in the GitHub repository K-Dense-AI/scientific-agents (172 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 78 tokens to every session and 3,451 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-09-03.

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