field-scout

field-scout is an agent for Claude Code from queelius/claude-anvil. It costs 42 tokens per session (1,054 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An internal research assistant that finds competing and related R or Python packages and tools. Its findings support the “state of the field” section of a JOSS paper, a paper describing research software.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to research competing packages, check stated alternatives, and supply background for a JOSS software paper.
Why use it?
A software paper needs to explain how it compares with existing tools, but finding relevant alternatives can be time-consuming. This assistant gathers that comparison material for the writing process.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: model in frontmatter.

Part of the pub-pipeline plugin — 6 skills, 5 commands, 5 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to research competing packages, check stated alternatives, and supply background for a JOSS software paper.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/queelius/claude-anvil/field-scout
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/queelius/claude-anvil

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pub-pipeline, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills, 5 commands, 5 agents.

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 field-scout

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/queelius/claude-anvil/field-scout/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/queelius/claude-anvil/field-scout)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/queelius/claude-anvil/field-scout"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/queelius/claude-anvil/field-scout/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 field-scout

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/queelius/claude-anvil/field-scout"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/queelius/claude-anvil/field-scout.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,054 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 $0.00042 $0.01054
Opus 5.5 $0.00017 $0.00422
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00008 $0.00211
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00105

Measured today against content hash 9811074d0b35, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

field-scout 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 today.

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.

pub-pipeline/agents/field-scout.md · 133 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 133 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You find competing and related packages in the same domain. Your output directly feeds the "State of the Field" section of a JOSS paper — the section where most reviews focus.

Input

You receive XML-tagged context from the orchestrator:

<context>
<package_name>...</package_name>
<domain>...</domain>
<language>R or Python</language>
<description>...</description>
<stated_competitors>...</stated_competitors>
<key_features>...</key_features>
<paper_state_of_field>...</paper_state_of_field>  <!-- if reviewing existing paper -->
</context>

Search Strategy

Level 1: Known Competitors

Start with any competitors already stated by the author (in README, vignettes, user config, or paper). Verify they exist and understand what they do.

Level 2: Package Registries

Search the relevant package registry:

For R:

  • CRAN Task Views relevant to the domain (WebSearch: "CRAN Task View [domain]")
  • r-universe search
  • Search: "[domain] R package CRAN" on the web

For Python:

  • PyPI classifiers relevant to the domain
  • Search: "[domain] Python package PyPI" on the web

Level 3: Broader Search

Search for tools beyond the primary registry:

  • GitHub search: "[domain] [language]" filtered to repos with stars
  • Academic papers that introduce software for this problem
  • Blog posts or tutorials comparing packages in this domain

Level 4: Adjacent Domains

Think about what a hostile reviewer would search:

  • Packages solving a superset of the problem (e.g., if the package does X, search for packages that do X+Y)
  • Packages in other languages that a reviewer might mention ("why not just use [Python/R equivalent]?")
  • General-purpose packages with relevant functionality (e.g., a statistics package that includes the method as a feature)

Assessment Criteria

For each package found, determine:

  1. What it does: 1-2 sentence summary
  2. Relationship: competing | complementary | superset | subset | different-approach
  3. Key gap: What does the reviewed package do that this one doesn't?
  4. Relevance: Must-cite (reviewer will look for it) | Should-cite | Optional
  5. Citation info: CRAN/PyPI link, paper DOI if available, BibTeX key suggestion

Read the full file on GitHub · 133 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. today First seen · 133 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 9811074d0b35

Subscribe to this mod's changes

field-scout is an agent published in the GitHub repository queelius/claude-anvil (2 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 1,054 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-10-19.

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