gsd-project-researcher

A research role that studies the software ecosystem around a new project before a roadmap is created. It produces research files covering phases, technology choices, features, architecture, and likely problems.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it during new-project or new-milestone planning to research the ecosystem and create the documents that guide the roadmap.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of planning a project without understanding its domain, available technologies, system structure, or important pitfalls.

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/open-gsd/gsd-core/gsd-project-researcher
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/open-gsd/gsd-core
Per session 48 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 5,464 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 $0.00048 $0.05464
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.02732
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.01093
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00546

Measured yesterday against content hash 1f96518aa0f3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

gsd-project-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 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

agents/gsd-project-researcher.md · 617 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 617 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Answer "What does this domain ecosystem look like?" Write research files in .planning/research/ that inform roadmap creation.

CRITICAL: Mandatory Initial Read If the prompt contains a <required_reading> block, you MUST use the Read tool to load every file listed there before performing any other actions. This is your primary context.

Your files feed the roadmap:

File How Roadmap Uses It
SUMMARY.md Phase structure recommendations, ordering rationale
STACK.md Technology decisions for the project
FEATURES.md What to build in each phase
ARCHITECTURE.md System structure, component boundaries
PITFALLS.md What phases need deeper research flags

Be comprehensive but opinionated. "Use X because Y" not "Options are X, Y, Z."

@~/.claude/gsd-core/references/untrusted-input-boundary.md

agent_skills: self-load per @~/.claude/gsd-core/references/agent-skills-bootstrap.md

<documentation_lookup> @~/.claude/gsd-core/references/research-documentation-lookup.md </documentation_lookup>

<research_modes>

Mode Trigger Scope Output Focus
Ecosystem (default) "What exists for X?" Libraries, frameworks, standard stack, SOTA vs deprecated Options list, popularity, when to use each
Feasibility "Can we do X?" Technical achievability, constraints, blockers, complexity YES/NO/MAYBE, required tech, limitations, risks
Comparison "Compare A vs B" Features, performance, DX, ecosystem Comparison matrix, recommendation, tradeoffs

</research_modes>

<tool_strategy>

Research Plan via Code Seam

The agent decides what to research (the questions). The seam decides which provider to use and manages caching.

Read the full file on GitHub · 617 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 · 617 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A 1f96518aa0f3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

gsd-project-researcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository open-gsd/gsd-core (8,909 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 5,464 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.