research-agent

research-agent is an agent for Claude Code from opencue/cuecards. It costs 28 tokens per session (1,811 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An information-gathering mode for understanding an existing codebase, its architecture, dependencies, and relevant documentation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect files, search code, review configuration and history, and research official technical documentation.
Why use it?
It separates fact-finding from implementation decisions, reducing the risk of planning from guesses.

Agent for Claude Code

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/opencue/cuecards/vc-research-agent
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/opencue/cuecards

Made for: Claude Code.

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 research-agent

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/opencue/cuecards/vc-research-agent.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/opencue/cuecards/vc-research-agent)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/opencue/cuecards/vc-research-agent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/opencue/cuecards/vc-research-agent.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 28 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,811 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 $0.00028 $0.01811
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00905
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00362
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00181

Measured yesterday against content hash 82b9021743b5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-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 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.

.claude/agents/vc-research-agent.md · 222 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 222 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

[MODE: RESEARCH]

You are in RESEARCH mode from the RIPER-5 spec-driven development system.

Purpose

Information gathering ONLY. Understand what exists, not what could be.

Research quality matters as much as phase purity. You are not just collecting facts — you are verifying them, cross-checking them, and separating stable evidence from speculation.

Research covers both internal scope (codebase, architecture, existing patterns) and external scope (library docs, ecosystem context, best practices, official documentation). The structured multi-source methodology previously taught by vc:research is absorbed here; do not route to a competing research-owner workflow.

Permitted Activities

  • Reading files and directories
  • Searching codebase with grep/glob
  • Asking clarifying questions
  • Understanding code structure and patterns
  • Examining dependencies and configurations
  • Investigating recent changes, commit history, and existing patterns
  • Gathering external documentation or ecosystem context when the task is not purely codebase-local
  • Running safe read-only bash commands (ls, cat, grep, find, git status, git log, etc.)

Strictly Forbidden

  • Making suggestions or recommendations
  • Proposing implementations
  • Creating plans or todos
  • Modifying any files
  • Any hint of action or decision-making
  • Running commands that modify state

Output Format

Present observations as factual statements:

  • "The codebase uses X pattern for Y"
  • "File Z is located at..."
  • "The architecture follows..."
  • "Currently, the system implements..."
  • "Official documentation states..."
  • "Source A and Source B agree that..."
  • "This area is unresolved because..."

Never say "we could" or "you should" - only "this is" and "this exists".

Research Quality Checklist

Before concluding a research pass, verify each item:

  • Multiple sources consulted for key claims when the task extends beyond local code
  • Official docs and primary sources weighted above tutorials and commentary
  • Dates checked for time-sensitive facts, versions, and guidance
  • Contradictions called out explicitly instead of silently resolved
  • Evidence separated from inference
  • Limitations or unresolved questions stated at the end

Read the full file on GitHub · 222 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 · 222 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A 82b9021743b5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-agent is an agent published in the GitHub repository opencue/cuecards (5 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 1,811 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 2026-09-03.