explain-dev

A development command that searches a connected knowledge base and explains a document or topic in it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explain a file or topic, combine relevant documents, and cite source documents and page numbers.
Why use it?
It helps you find and understand stored technical material without reading through the whole knowledge base.

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/punt-labs/quarry/explain-dev
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/punt-labs/quarry
Per session 9 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 182 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 $0.00009 $0.00182
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00091
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00036
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00018

Measured 2d ago against content hash a3829634adfe, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explain-dev 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 2d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

  • explain — 91% identical, 4 lines differ
plugin/commands/explain-dev.md · 20 lines

What it actually says

Input

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Task

Search the knowledge base to find relevant content, then provide a clear explanation.

  1. Call mcp__plugin_quarry-dev_quarry__find with a query derived from the arguments. If the arguments look like a document name (has a file extension like .pdf, .md, .py), also set document_filter to the document name.

  2. Using the search results, provide a clear, concise explanation of the document or topic. If results span multiple documents, synthesize across them. Cite specific documents and page numbers in your explanation.

  3. If no results are found, say so and suggest the user ingest the relevant content first with /ingest-dev.

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. 2d ago First seen · 20 lines · 9 tokens per session scan A a3829634adfe

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain-dev is a command published in the GitHub repository punt-labs/quarry (3 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 9 tokens to every session and 182 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.