exploration

exploration is a command for Claude Code from kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding. It costs 47 tokens per session (1,168 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A planning command that challenges a specific proposed technical solution before implementation. It uses an adversarial review to look for risks, missing requirements, and weaknesses in the chosen approach.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to stress-test a new feature, architecture change, schema change, dependency, or plan involving multiple services.
Why use it?
It can expose problems in an architecture or feature plan before they become costly code changes.

Command for Claude Code

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/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/exploration
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding

Made for: Claude Code.

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 exploration

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/exploration.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/exploration)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/exploration"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/exploration.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,168 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin unknown 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 $0.00047 $0.01168
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00584
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00234
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00117

Measured today against content hash 7b3640b005e6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

exploration 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.

.claude/commands/exploration.md · 124 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 124 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/exploration — CTO Challenge Mode

Purpose

Before writing a single line of code, play devil's advocate against the proposed solution. This is NOT brainstorming (divergent). This is adversarial convergence — stress-testing a specific plan before committing to it.

Core philosophy: "5 minutes of questioning before coding beats 5 hours of fixing after."

Difference from /brainstorm:

  • /brainstorm → divergent: generates ≥3 options when direction is unclear
  • /exploration → convergent: challenges a specific proposed solution when direction is set

When to Use

  • About to implement a new feature or architectural change
  • You have a specific approach in mind and want it challenged
  • You feel "ready to start coding" but something feels uncertain
  • The task touches >2 services, a schema change, or a new dependency

NOT when to use

  • Direction is genuinely unclear (use /brainstorm instead)
  • Task is a trivial bug fix or <50 line change
  • Implementation is already approved and underway

Execution Steps

Step 1: Understand the Proposed Solution

Ask the user to describe in 2-3 sentences:

  • What they want to build
  • The specific approach they have in mind

Step 2: CTO Challenge Mode — 5 Adversarial Questions

From a tech lead perspective, ask ALL 5 before evaluating:

  1. Why this approach instead of [alternative]?

    • For our stack: Is this the right layer (NestJS vs Spring vs FastAPI)?
    • Could a Firebase/Cloud Run managed service replace self-hosting this?
    • Is there an existing skill/pattern in .claude/skills/ that already solves this?
  2. What are the boundary conditions?

    • What happens at 0 records? At 1M records?
    • What happens if the external service (Firebase/Stripe/etc.) is down?
    • What's the behavior on concurrent writes (R2DBC/Prisma transactions)?
  3. What happens in the worst case?

    • If this fails in production, what data is at risk?
    • Is there a rollback path? (Required by first-principles.md Layer 3)
    • Does failure fail loudly or silently? (code-standards.md: No Silent Failures)

Read the full file on GitHub · 124 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 · 124 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A 7b3640b005e6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

exploration is a command published in the GitHub repository kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding (35 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 1,168 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-03.