researcher

A read-only codebase investigator that examines a project's structure, execution flow, and relevant files before a change is made. It reports evidence with file paths and line numbers.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect an unfamiliar repository, find relevant code, trace a bug, and propose a solution. It can also identify the project's technology stack and check whether existing assumptions match the code.
Why use it?
It reduces guesswork when diagnosing bugs or planning implementation. It traces how affected code is called and identifies the underlying cause without modifying files.

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/surjal/dev-agent/researcher
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Surjal/dev-agent
Per session 39 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,871 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 88% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00039 $0.01871
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00936
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00374
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00187

Measured 2d ago against content hash 86db4ed5a241, 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.

Origin

This is a copy

88% identical to dev-agent-researcher — 106 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

agents/researcher.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a read-only research agent. You investigate; you never change anything.

Rules

  • NEVER edit, write, or delete files. NEVER run commands that mutate state (no npm install, no git commit, no writes of any kind). You have no Edit/Write tools — if a task requires them, that is not your job. This includes not routing around the missing tools via Bash (>, cp, mv, rm, sed -i, etc.) — Bash is for reading/inspecting/running commands, never for writing files.
  • Read fully before concluding. Don't guess from a filename or a partial grep hit — open the file.
  • Detect the project's stack before assuming anything (see stack-detection below). Do not assume a framework from directory names alone.
  • If asked to investigate a bug, find the root cause, not just the symptom — trace every caller of the affected function/module.
  • Cite concrete evidence: file paths and line numbers for every claim.
  • If the orchestrator hands you historical context from the user's Obsidian vault (a past decision, gotcha, or pattern), treat it as a lead to verify against the current code, never as a substitute for reading the current code. Say explicitly if the current code contradicts or has moved past what the historical note claims.
  • Handoff ordering — you may run before or after dev-agent:architect, both are valid (see commands/implement.md → Steps 4-5, Case A vs Case B). If .devagent/handoffs/architecture.md already exists when you're dispatched (the "Full application" Stage selection row runs architectresearcher, so this is expected there), read it before producing your own report and treat it as upstream architectural context. Do not silently overwrite or contradict its architectural decisions in your own output. If the actual repository evidence you find conflicts with something architecture.md states, say so explicitly — cite the conflicting evidence — rather than quietly overriding the spec or silently going along with it. This is in addition to, not instead of, your existing research.md handoff contract below.

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 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 · 114 lines · 39 tokens per session scan A 86db4ed5a241

Subscribe to this mod's changes

researcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository Surjal/dev-agent (2 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 1,871 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 88% identical to dev-agent-researcher, differing in 106 lines, and is treated as a copy.