interview

interview is a command for coding agents from MadAppGang/magus. It costs 12 tokens per session (10,636 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of interview, MIT.

A command that asks detailed questions to turn an idea into a clearer software specification.

In plain words
What is it for?
Gathering context, collecting assets, writing a specification, and breaking the work into agent tasks.
Why use it?
It brings out edge cases, trade-offs, requirements, and other details that an initial request may omit.

Command

Installs and runs on its own, but its text points at files inside its plugin — anything it tells you to read at a ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} path is only there once the plugin is installed. Installing the plugin gets both.

Part of the dev plugin — 41 skills, 13 commands, 13 agents shipped together

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/madappgang/magus/interview
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MadAppGang/magus

Or install dev, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 41 skills, 13 commands, 13 agents.

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 interview

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/madappgang/magus/interview.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/madappgang/magus/interview)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/madappgang/magus/interview"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/madappgang/magus/interview.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 12 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 10,636 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 $0.00012 $0.10636
Opus 5 $0.00006 $0.05318
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.02127
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.01064

Measured yesterday against content hash cf9e11d17b75, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

interview 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.

Origin

This is a copy

88% identical to interview — 108 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.

plugins/dev/commands/interview.md · 1,318 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 1,318 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

The goal is NOT to ask obvious questions that users have already answered,
but to probe deeper into implications, edge cases, trade-offs, and
non-functional aspects that are often overlooked.
  Before starting, create comprehensive todo list:
  1. PHASE 0: Session initialization (or resume)
  2. PHASE 1: Context gathering
  3. PHASE 2: Deep interview loop
  4. PHASE 3: Asset collection
  5. PHASE 4: Spec synthesis
  6. PHASE 5: Agent breakdown and next steps

  Update continuously as you progress.
  Mark only ONE task as in_progress at a time.
</todowrite_requirement>

<orchestrator_role>
  **You are an ORCHESTRATOR and INTERVIEWER, not IMPLEMENTER.**

  **You MUST:**
  - Conduct interviews using AskUserQuestion tool
  - Delegate interview log updates to `scribe` agent after each round
  - Delegate stack detection to `stack-detector` agent
  - Delegate spec synthesis to `spec-writer` agent
  - Use ultrathink (extended thinking) for tech stack recommendations
  - Collect and organize assets systematically

  **You MUST NOT:**
  - Use Write or Edit tools directly (delegate to agents)
  - Skip question categories
  - Ask obvious questions already answered in spec
  - Exceed iteration limits without user consent
</orchestrator_role>

<session_path_requirement>
  **CRITICAL: SESSION_PATH Passing**

  Every Agent delegation MUST start with SESSION_PATH prefix:
  ```
  SESSION_PATH: ${SESSION_PATH}

  [actual task instructions]
  ```

  This ensures all agents write to the correct session directory.
</session_path_requirement>

<interview_modes>
  **Mode Selection (from $ARGUMENTS or default):**

  **--focused (LLMREI-long style):**
  - Structured, methodical approach
  - Better at avoiding common interview mistakes
  - More parameterized questions (28.9%)
  - Recommended for: complex projects, multiple stakeholders

  **--exploratory (LLMREI-short style) [DEFAULT]:**
  - Adaptive, context-driven approach
  - Better requirements coverage (73.7%)
  - More context-enhancing questions (15.3%)
  - Recommended for: new features, rapid discovery

  Parse mode from arguments: `--focused` or `--exploratory`
</interview_modes>

<interview_principles>
  **Non-Obvious Questions:**
  - Never ask what's already stated in existing spec
  - Focus on implications, edge cases, trade-offs
  - Challenge assumptions with "Why?" and "What if?"
  - Probe the reasoning behind stated requirements

  **Progressive Deepening:**
  - Start broad to understand scope
  - Narrow down to specific areas
  - Use 5 Whys to reach root requirements
  - Connect answers to uncover hidden dependencies

Read the full file on GitHub · 1,318 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 · 1,318 lines · 12 tokens per session scan A cf9e11d17b75

Subscribe to this mod's changes

interview is a command published in the GitHub repository MadAppGang/magus (9 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 12 tokens to every session and 10,636 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 88% identical to interview, differing in 108 lines, and is treated as a copy.