start

A command that starts a development session by selecting a work item, such as a feature, bug, or task, and preparing a briefing for it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to see recommended work items, choose one to start, or begin a specific work item when you already know its ID.
Why use it?
It removes the need to search for the next task and gather its context manually before coding.

Command

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 commands/ankushdixit/claude-plugins/start
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ankushdixit/claude-plugins
Per session 8 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,056 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 $0.00008 $0.01056
Opus 5 $0.00004 $0.00528
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00211
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00106

Measured yesterday against content hash bebc0753c8b4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start 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.

solokit/commands/start.md · 127 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 127 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Session Start

Step 1: Determine Work Item to Start

If user provided a work item ID in $ARGUMENTS:

  • Skip to Step 3 and start that specific work item

If no work item ID provided:

  • Continue to Step 2 for interactive selection

Step 2: Get Recommendations and Ask User

Get the top 4 recommended work items:

python -m solokit.work_items.get_next_recommendations --limit 4

This will output ready-to-start work items in format:

work_item_id | type | title | priority

Parse the output and present options using AskUserQuestion:

Question: Which work item do you want to start?

  • Question: "Select a work item to start working on:"
  • Header: "Work Item"
  • Multi-select: false
  • Options (up to 4):
    • Label: "{work_item_id}: {title}", Description: "Type: {type} | Priority: {priority}"
    • Label: "{work_item_id}: {title}", Description: "Type: {type} | Priority: {priority}"
    • Label: "{work_item_id}: {title}", Description: "Type: {type} | Priority: {priority}"
    • Label: "{work_item_id}: {title}", Description: "Type: {type} | Priority: {priority}"

Example option formatting:

  • Label: "feature_auth: Add user authentication"
  • Description: "Type: feature | Priority: high"

If no ready work items found:

  • The script will exit with error
  • Show message: "No work items ready to start. All items are blocked by dependencies or already in progress."
  • Display hint: "Use /work-list to see all work items and their status."
  • Exit without calling command

Step 3: Start Session

Based on the selected work item ID (either from user argument or interactive selection):

sk start {work_item_id}

Replace {work_item_id} with:

  • The value from $ARGUMENTS if user provided it
  • The selected work item ID from Step 2 if interactive selection was used

The briefing includes:

  • Complete project context (technology stack, directory tree, documentation)
  • Previous work context (for in-progress items) - commits made, files changed, quality gates from prior sessions
  • Full work item specification from .session/specs/{work_item_id}.md (source of truth)
  • Work item tracking details (title, type, priority, dependencies)
  • Spec validation warnings (if specification is incomplete)
  • Top 10 relevant learnings scored by keyword matching, type relevance, recency, and category
  • Milestone context and progress (if the work item belongs to a milestone)

Read the full file on GitHub · 127 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 · 127 lines · 8 tokens per session scan A bebc0753c8b4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start is a command published in the GitHub repository ankushdixit/claude-plugins (3 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 8 tokens to every session and 1,056 once invoked, about $0.0000 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 2026-08-31.