research-phase

research-phase is a command for coding agents from SienkLogic/plan-build-run. It costs 20 tokens per session (403 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command for researching how to implement a planned project phase before writing its detailed plan. A phase is a defined chunk of work on a roadmap.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for gathering technical research for a selected roadmap phase and saving the findings for later planning.
Why use it?
It helps investigate feasibility, requirements, and implementation choices before committing to an approach.

Command

Part of the pbr plugin — 45 skills, 71 commands, 18 agents, 3 hooks 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/sienklogic/plan-build-run/research-phase
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SienkLogic/plan-build-run

Or install pbr, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 45 skills, 71 commands, 18 agents, 3 hooks.

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 research-phase

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/sienklogic/plan-build-run/research-phase.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/sienklogic/plan-build-run/research-phase)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/sienklogic/plan-build-run/research-phase"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/sienklogic/plan-build-run/research-phase.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 20 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 403 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 $0.00020 $0.00403
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00201
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00081
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00040

Measured yesterday against content hash bdfa5945d35f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-phase 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.

plugins/pbr/commands/research-phase.md · 60 lines

What it actually says

Note: This is a standalone research command. For most workflows, use /pbr:plan-phase which integrates research automatically.

Use this command when:

  • You want to research without planning yet
  • You want to re-research after planning is complete
  • You need to investigate before deciding if a phase is feasible

@.planning/ROADMAP.md @.planning/STATE.md

PHASE_INFO=$(pbr-tools roadmap get-phase "$ARGUMENTS")

Error if phase not found. Extract phase_number, phase_name, goal.

2. Check Existing Research

Look for .planning/phases/{NN}-*/RESEARCH.md. If exists, offer: 1) Update research, 2) View existing, 3) Skip.

3. Gather Context

Read phase description, requirements, and prior decisions.

4. Spawn Researcher

Task({
  subagent_type: "pbr:researcher",
  prompt: "Research implementation approach for Phase {N}: {name}\n\nPhase goal: {goal}\nRequirements: {requirements}\nPrior decisions: {decisions}\n\nWrite to: .planning/phases/{NN}-{slug}/{NN}-RESEARCH.md"
})

5. Handle Return

  • ## RESEARCH COMPLETE: Display summary, offer /pbr:plan-phase {N}
  • ## RESEARCH INCONCLUSIVE: Show what was attempted, offer options
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 · 60 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A bdfa5945d35f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-phase is a command published in the GitHub repository SienkLogic/plan-build-run (17 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 403 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.