curiosity-engine

curiosity-engine is a command for Claude Code, Codex from freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend. It costs 41 tokens per session (4,242 once invoked), scanned B, original, Apache-2.0.

A command that runs a structured question-and-answer exchange between the main agent and another model for several rounds.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explore a topic through multiple rounds, with every response containing both an answer and a follow-up question.
Why use it?
It gives the discussion a fixed format and repeated challenge-and-answer cycle instead of an unstructured conversation.

Command for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: argument-hint in frontmatter, but also runs codex exec. Also seen: mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex; mentions Gemini CLI.

Part of the phone-a-friend plugin — 4 skills, 3 commands, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it to explore a topic through multiple rounds, with every response containing both an answer and a follow-up question.

Compare 6 commands from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend/curiosity-engine
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/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install phone-a-friend, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 4 skills, 3 commands, 1 agent.

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 curiosity-engine

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend/curiosity-engine/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend/curiosity-engine)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend/curiosity-engine"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend/curiosity-engine/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 curiosity-engine

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend/curiosity-engine"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend/curiosity-engine.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 41 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 4,242 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 2 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 $0.00041 $0.04242
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.02121
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00848
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00424

Measured 10d ago against content hash b5e7e8c153ab, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

curiosity-engine scanned grade B with 2 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 10d 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.

Sends data to an external URLmediumData exfiltration

A POST to an outside endpoint may be telemetry or may be exfiltration; either way the mod talks to somewhere, and you should know where.

| **Ollama** | `PROMPT_JSON="$(jq -Rs . < "$PROMPT_FILE")"; curl -s http://localhost:11434/api/chat -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"model\":\"<model>\",\"messages\":[{\"role\":\"user\",\"content\":${PROMPT_JSO

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

| **Ollama** | `PROMPT_JSON="$(jq -Rs . < "$PROMPT_FILE")"; curl -s http://localhost:11434/api/chat -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"model\":\"<model>\",\"messages\":[{\"role\":\"user\",\"content\":${PROMPT_JSO
commands/curiosity-engine.md · 412 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 412 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/curiosity-engine

A structured ping-pong Q&A game between the host orchestrating model (the agent running this skill — Claude in Claude Code, the OpenCode model in OpenCode) and a backend model. Both sides MUST produce an ANSWER: and a QUESTION: every round. The game is seeded with a topic and runs for N rounds (default 3, max 6).

Execution rules

  • The host model running this skill is the orchestrator. It serves the opening question and answers each round directly. Do NOT call phone-a-friend --to claude (or any other backend) to generate the orchestrator's questions or answers — that would relay the orchestrator role to a different model.
  • One backend per relay call. Never pass comma-separated values to --to (e.g. phone-a-friend --to codex,gemini).
  • curiosity-engine is a host slash command / Agent Skill, not a PaF CLI subcommand. Never run phone-a-friend curiosity-engine.
  • --backend is an argument to this skill, not a PaF CLI flag. Do not pass --backend to phone-a-friend.
  • Suppress the working-tree diff on every binary-mode relay (see "Diff suppression" below). Curiosity rounds are seeded with self-contained prompts; the diff would be noise.
  • Do NOT dump repo files or git output (git show, git diff, git status, etc.) into the relay prompt. Curiosity rounds are seeded with self-contained prompts; if the round needs file context, repo-aware backends (antigravity, codex, gemini) can read the repo via --repo "$PWD". For ollama (no repo file access), pick a repo-aware backend instead, or ask before sending a minimal excerpt. Inlining repo content can leak uncommitted edits or committed secrets and is not needed for a Q&A rally. The opening question and round transcripts are narrative context that the orchestrator generates and inlines into the relay prompt; that is the intended use, not file dumping.

Inputs

  • Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Step 0 — Relay mode

command -v phone-a-friend

Read the full file on GitHub · 412 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. 10d ago First seen · 412 lines · 41 tokens per session scan B b5e7e8c153ab

Subscribe to this mod's changes

curiosity-engine is a command published in the GitHub repository freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend (10 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 4,242 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 2 findings (sends data to an external url, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.