ECC is a toolkit that organizes and improves how coding agents work through skills, memory, security checks, research practices, and related extensions. It is for developers using agents such as Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Cursor.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to affaan-m/ECC. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/affaan-m/ECC/main/.kiro/steering/research-mode.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/affaan-m/ECCWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/affaan-m/ecc/research-mode)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/affaan-m/ecc/research-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/affaan-m/ecc/research-mode.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00318 | $0.00318 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00159 | $0.00159 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00064 | $0.00064 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00032 | $0.00032 |
Grade A, and why
ECC research-mode.md 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.
What it actually says
Research Mode
Use this context when researching technologies, evaluating options, or making architectural decisions.
Research Process
- Define the problem or question clearly
- Identify evaluation criteria
- Research available options
- Compare options against criteria
- Document findings and recommendations
- Consider trade-offs and constraints
Evaluation Criteria
Technical Fit
- Does it solve the problem effectively?
- Is it compatible with existing stack?
- What are the technical constraints?
Maturity & Support
- Is the technology mature and stable?
- Is there active community support?
- Is documentation comprehensive?
- Are there known issues or limitations?
Performance & Scalability
- What are the performance characteristics?
- How does it scale?
- What are the resource requirements?
Developer Experience
- Is it easy to learn and use?
- Are there good tooling and IDE support?
- What's the debugging experience like?
Long-term Viability
- Is the project actively maintained?
- What's the adoption trend?
- Are there migration paths if needed?
Cost & Licensing
- What are the licensing terms?
- What are the operational costs?
- Are there vendor lock-in concerns?
Documentation
- Document decision rationale
- List pros and cons of each option
- Include relevant benchmarks or comparisons
- Note any assumptions or constraints
- Provide recommendations with justification
Invocation
Use #research-mode to activate this context when researching or evaluating options.
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.
- today First seen · 63 lines · 318 tokens per session scan A bd569bea34f6
ECC research-mode.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository affaan-m/ECC (251,781 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 318 tokens to every session, about $0.0016 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 2026-09-07.
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