ralph_research

A command for researching the highest-priority Linear ticket marked as needing investigation. Linear is a task-tracking system for software teams.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to select or open a research ticket, read its history and linked material, investigate the issue, and record findings in the project.
Why use it?
It turns an investigation ticket into a documented research task and moves it through the relevant Linear statuses.

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/jeffh/claude-plugins/ralph_research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jeffh/claude-plugins
Per session 7 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 819 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 $0.00007 $0.00819
Opus 5 $0.00003 $0.00409
Sonnet 5 $0.00001 $0.00164
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00082

Measured 3d ago against content hash 8a2c9f086bc9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ralph_research 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 3d 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.

humanlayer/commands/ralph_research.md · 82 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 82 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PART I - IF A LINEAR TICKET IS MENTIONED

0c. use linear cli to fetch the selected item into thoughts with the ticket number - ./thoughts/shared/tickets/ENG-xxxx.md 0d. read the ticket and all comments to understand what research is needed and any previous attempts

PART I - IF NO TICKET IS MENTIONED

  1. read .claude/commands/linear.md 0a. fetch the top 10 priority items from linear in status "research needed" using the MCP tools, noting all items in the links section 0b. select the highest priority SMALL or XS issue from the list (if no SMALL or XS issues exist, EXIT IMMEDIATELY and inform the user) 0c. use linear cli to fetch the selected item into thoughts with the ticket number - ./thoughts/shared/tickets/ENG-xxxx.md 0d. read the ticket and all comments to understand what research is needed and any previous attempts

PART II - NEXT STEPS

think deeply

  1. move the item to "research in progress" using the MCP tools 1a. read any linked documents in the links section to understand context 1b. if insufficient information to conduct research, add a comment asking for clarification and move back to "research needed"

think deeply about the research needs

  1. conduct the research: 2a. read .claude/commands/research_codebase.md for guidance on effective codebase research 2b. if the linear comments suggest web research is needed, use WebSearch to research external solutions, APIs, or best practices 2c. search the codebase for relevant implementations and patterns 2d. examine existing similar features or related code 2e. identify technical constraints and opportunities 2f. Be unbiased - don't think too much about an ideal implementation plan, just document all related files and how the systems work today 2g. document findings in a new thoughts document: thoughts/shared/research/YYYY-MM-DD-ENG-XXXX-description.md
    • Format: YYYY-MM-DD-ENG-XXXX-description.md where:
      • YYYY-MM-DD is today's date
      • ENG-XXXX is the ticket number (omit if no ticket)
      • description is a brief kebab-case description of the research topic
    • Examples:
      • With ticket: 2025-01-08-ENG-1478-parent-child-tracking.md
      • Without ticket: 2025-01-08-error-handling-patterns.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 82 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. 3d ago First seen · 82 lines · 7 tokens per session scan A 8a2c9f086bc9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ralph_research is a command published in the GitHub repository jeffh/claude-plugins (12 stars, last pushed 18d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 7 tokens to every session and 819 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 2026-08-30.