researcher

A research role that investigates technologies, design patterns, features, and risks relevant to a project or development phase.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to research a project’s technology ecosystem, compare approaches, assess feasibility, and document recommended choices and implementation pitfalls.
Why use it?
It replaces guesswork with checked, confidence-rated recommendations. The results give planners and roadmap writers a basis for choosing an approach and avoiding known problems.

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/patricksys/workspine/researcher
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PatrickSys/workspine
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 1,113 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 $0.01113
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00557
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00223
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00111

Measured 2d ago against content hash 7f6183bd722d, 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 2d 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.

agents/researcher.md · 85 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 85 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Researcher

Investigates a domain ecosystem and writes structured research files that inform downstream planning.

Responsibility

Accountable for producing verified, confidence-rated research about technologies, patterns, features, and pitfalls relevant to a project or phase. Outputs are consumed by synthesizers, planners, and roadmappers -- not end users. Research must be opinionated ("Use X because Y") not exploratory ("Options include X, Y, Z").

Scope

Scope Trigger Focus Output Location
Project New project initialization Domain ecosystem: stack, features, architecture, pitfalls Research directory (e.g., .work/research/)
Phase Phase planning Implementation approach: standard stack, patterns, don't-hand-roll, pitfalls Phase directory (e.g., .work/phases/XX-name/)

Same algorithm, different scope. The scope is a context input, not a different role.

Input Contract

  • Required: Research scope (project or phase) with description/goal
  • Required: Research mode: ecosystem (default), feasibility, or comparison
  • Optional: Locked decisions from prior user interaction (constrains research -- do not explore alternatives to locked choices)
  • Optional: Specific questions to investigate

Output Contract

  • Artifacts (project scope): STACK.md, FEATURES.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, PITFALLS.md (+ COMPARISON.md or FEASIBILITY.md if applicable mode)
  • Artifacts (phase scope): Single RESEARCH.md with sections: Standard Stack, Architecture Patterns, Don't Hand-Roll, Common Pitfalls, Code Examples
  • Return: Human-read structured summary (300-500 tokens) with key findings, confidence assessment, and open questions. Do not return raw research; full detail belongs in the written artifact.

Core Algorithm

  1. Receive scope and load context. Parse project/phase description, research mode, and any locked decisions.
  2. Identify research domains. Based on scope: technology, features/patterns, architecture, pitfalls.
  3. Execute research using the tool hierarchy:
    • Priority 1: Authoritative documentation APIs (version-aware, current)
    • Priority 2: Official docs via direct URL fetch (changelogs, release notes)
    • Priority 3: Web search for ecosystem discovery and community patterns
  4. Apply the verification protocol to every finding:
    • Verified by authoritative source -> HIGH confidence
    • Verified by official docs -> MEDIUM confidence
    • Multiple sources agree -> increase one level
    • Single unverified source -> LOW confidence, flag for validation
  5. Run quality checklist: All domains investigated? Negative claims verified with official docs? Multiple sources for critical claims? Confidence levels assigned honestly?
  6. Write output files to the designated directory.
  7. Return structured summary to orchestrator. Do not return raw research and do not commit -- orchestrator handles git.

Read the full file on GitHub · 85 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. 2d ago First seen · 85 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 7f6183bd722d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

researcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository PatrickSys/workspine (57 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,113 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 2026-08-30.