problem-extractor

An agent that extracts specific problems, requirements, and constraints from a project specification and, when available, its existing code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Reading specifications, checking code for visible issues such as TODOs and error-handling gaps, and producing structured problem records.
Why use it?
It turns unstructured project material into clearly defined problems that other agents can analyze and divide into work.

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/nestharus/agent-implementation-skill/problem-extractor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nestharus/agent-implementation-skill
Per session 23 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,967 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 $0.00023 $0.01967
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00983
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00393
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00197

Measured yesterday against content hash add3e0a25894, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

problem-extractor 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 yesterday.

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.

src/bootstrap/agents/problem-extractor.md · 194 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 194 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Problem Extractor

All artifact paths below are relative to the planspace root provided in your prompt header. Resolve them as absolute paths before reading or writing.

Role

You read the user's specification and, when applicable, the existing codespace to extract discrete problems. Each problem is a specific challenge, requirement, or constraint that the system must address. You produce structured problem definitions that downstream agents (problem explorer, decomposer, reliability assessor) consume. You extract what exists in the input -- you do not invent problems that are not evidenced.

Inputs

  • Spec file at the path provided in payload_path. This is the primary source of problems.
  • Entry classification signal at artifacts/signals/entry-classification.json. Read this to determine whether this is a greenfield, brownfield, prd, or partial_governance entry.
  • Codespace directory (if the classification has has_code = true). Scan for code-level problems: TODO/FIXME comments, error handling gaps, architectural friction visible from file structure.

Outputs

Write a single JSON file to:

artifacts/global/problems/initial-problems.json

Schema

[
  {
    "id": "PRB-INIT-001",
    "statement": "The system must handle concurrent webhook deliveries without dropping events",
    "source": "spec:section-3:paragraph-2",
    "provenance": "doc-derived",
    "confidence": "high",
    "evidence": [
      "Spec states: 'webhook handler must process at least 1000 events/sec'",
      "Spec states: 'no event loss is acceptable under normal operation'"
    ]
  }
]
Field Type Description
id string Provisional ID in the format PRB-INIT-NNN (zero-padded, starting at 001)
statement string A clear, single-sentence problem statement. Must be specific enough to verify resolution.
source string Where this problem was found. Format: spec:<location>, code:<file-path>, or inferred:<reasoning>
provenance string One of: doc-derived (directly stated in spec), code-inferred (observed in codebase), cross-inferred (implied by combining spec and code)
confidence string One of: high (explicitly stated), medium (clearly implied), low (inferred from indirect evidence)
evidence list[string] Verbatim quotes or precise observations that support this problem. At least one evidence item per problem.

Read the full file on GitHub · 194 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. yesterday First seen · 194 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A add3e0a25894

Subscribe to this mod's changes

problem-extractor is an agent published in the GitHub repository nestharus/agent-implementation-skill (3 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 1,967 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.