research-first

research-first is a cursor rule for Cursor from danielvm-git/bigpowers. It costs 51 tokens per session (770 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Look-before-build — search registries, repo, existing skills, and web for prior art before implementing. Appends Prior Art to the spec. Use after survey-context and before elaborate-spec, when adding dependencies, or when the task may already be solved.

Cursor rule for Cursor

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 rules/danielvm-git/bigpowers/research-first
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/danielvm-git/bigpowers

Made for: Cursor.

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-first

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/danielvm-git/bigpowers/research-first.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/danielvm-git/bigpowers/research-first)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/danielvm-git/bigpowers/research-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/danielvm-git/bigpowers/research-first.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 51 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 770 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 $0.00051 $0.00770
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00385
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00154
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00077

Measured today against content hash 3a9118b5f350, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-first 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.

.cursor/rules/research-first.mdc · 87 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 87 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

story: e03s01

story: e21s02

Research First

HARD GATE — Do NOT implement until prior art is searched. Minimum outcome: adopt, extend, compose, or build — with evidence.

Process

  1. Read specs/product/SCOPE_LATEST.yaml, specs/release-plan.yaml + epic shards, and the current task statement.
  2. Search in order: this repo → bigpowers skills (search-skills) → package registries → web docs.
  3. Check opensrc cache — if the task integrates an external library, run bash scripts/bp-opensrc-check.sh (or npx opensrc search <pkg>) to find locally-cached source. Read the src/ directory for API shapes before writing any integration code.
  4. For each candidate: note name, URL/path, fit (adopt | extend | compose | build).
  5. Append ## Prior Art to requirements/SCOPE_LATEST.yaml notes or the active epic story.

opensrc Integration

opensrc is a local cache of 200+ open-source repos and npm/PyPI packages. Query it before building any external integration to avoid re-inventing documented API shapes.

# Check if a package is cached
npx opensrc search <package-name>

# Or use the bundled helper (checks all deps from package.json or requirements.txt)
bash scripts/bp-opensrc-check.sh [package.json|requirements.txt]

If opensrc finds a match, read its src/ or source directory and append findings to the Prior Art section:

opensrc: found <pkg> v<version> — exports <key classes/functions>

If opensrc is not installed or the package is not cached, fall through to web docs normally.

Outcome matrix

Verdict Action
adopt Use as-is; link in plan; no new code
extend Wrap or configure existing solution
compose Chain existing skills/modules
build New implementation — justify why others failed

Verify

→ verify: grep -rq 'Prior Art' specs/product specs/release-plan.yaml specs/epics 2>/dev/null

See REFERENCE.md for search commands and registry checklist.

Read the full file on GitHub · 87 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 · 87 lines · 51 tokens per session scan A 3a9118b5f350

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-first is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository danielvm-git/bigpowers (162 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 51 tokens to every session and 770 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.