analyze-spec

analyze-spec is a skill for Claude Code from a16z/jolt. It costs 18 tokens per session (1,272 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A specification-review process that finds unclear requirements, gathers evidence from a codebase, and scores how much ambiguity remains.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review a proposed change interactively or as a single review comment on a pull request, using repository evidence and previously answered questions.
Why use it?
It exposes missing or uncertain details before implementation, reducing the chance that developers build the wrong thing.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions Claude Code.

About the project

Jolt is a zero-knowledge virtual machine for RISC-V that enables programs to be executed and cryptographically proven. It is for developers and contributors working with zero-knowledge proofs and virtual machines, while the catalogue entries provide instructions and skills for using or developing Jolt.

a16z/jolt · 1,022 stars · on GitHub · jolt.a16zcrypto.com

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 skills/a16z/jolt/analyze-spec
Any agent
npx skills add a16z/jolt --skill analyze-spec
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/a16z/jolt

Made for: Claude Code.

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 analyze-spec

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/a16z/jolt/analyze-spec.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/a16z/jolt/analyze-spec)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/a16z/jolt/analyze-spec"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/a16z/jolt/analyze-spec.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,272 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 5.1 $0.00018 $0.01272
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00636
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00254
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00127

Measured 6d ago against content hash ebc8f7083970, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

analyze-spec 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 6d 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.

.claude/skills/analyze-spec/SKILL.md · 104 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 104 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

This skill operates in two modes:

  • Local mode (invoked via /analyze-spec in Claude Code): Full interactive Socratic interview — one question at a time, iterative refinement with the spec author.
  • Remote mode (triggered externally via the claude-spec-review-request label): Single-pass analysis — all questions posted at once as a single PR comment. Reads prior PR comments as context to account for already-answered questions.

Adapted from the Ouroboros-inspired deep interview methodology — specification quality is the primary bottleneck in AI-assisted development.

<Execution_Policy>

  • Gather codebase facts via explore agent BEFORE asking about them
  • Cite repo evidence (file path, symbol, or pattern) instead of asking the spec author to rediscover it
  • Score ambiguity transparently
  • Do not approve until ambiguity ≤ threshold (default 0.2)
  • Allow early approval with a clear warning if ambiguity is still high </Execution_Policy>

<Mode_Detection> Detect which mode to use:

  • Remote mode: Running in a remote Claude instance triggered by the claude-spec-review-request label. Indicators: environment is non-interactive (no TTY), or running inside a GitHub PR context.
  • Local mode: Running interactively in a terminal via /analyze-spec.

When in doubt, default to local mode (interactive). </Mode_Detection>

Phase 1: Initialize

  1. Locate the spec:
    • If a path is provided in {{ARGUMENTS}}, use that directly.
    • Otherwise, detect the PR number:
      • Run gh pr view --json number --jq .number to get the current branch's PR number.
      • If that fails, list specs: ls specs/ and ask the user which one.
    • Look for specs/<PR#>-*.md matching the PR number. This is the spec for this PR.
    • If no match, fall back to finding any specs/*.md file that is NOT TEMPLATE.md.
    • If multiple specs match, prefer the one matching the PR number. If still ambiguous, ask the user.
  2. Read the spec thoroughly — understand all sections (Summary, Intent, Evaluation, Design, Execution).
  3. Read jolt-eval/README.md so you understand the invariant/objective framework for scoring Success Criteria and generating questions.
  4. Explore the codebase: Run explore agent to map codebase areas relevant to the spec's intent.
  5. Read prior context (remote mode): Read all existing PR comments via gh pr view --json comments to identify questions already asked and answers already given. Account for these when scoring — don't re-ask answered questions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 104 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 6d ago First seen · 104 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A ebc8f7083970

Subscribe to this mod's changes

analyze-spec is a skill published in the GitHub repository a16z/jolt (1,022 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 1,272 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 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

implementing-zero-knowledge-proof-for-authentication

Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) allow a prover to demonstrate knowledge of a secret (such as a password or private key) without revealing the secret itself. This skill implements the Schnorr identificati.

xalgorix/xalgorix · 53 tokens

zkp-toolkit

Zero-Knowledge Proof utilities - proof generation, verification, selective disclosure, ZK-Rollup batching, and benchmarking across ZK systems.

chainlesschain/chainlesschain · 33 tokens

configuring-certificate-authority-with-openssl

A Certificate Authority (CA) is the trust anchor in a PKI hierarchy, responsible for issuing, signing, and revoking digital certificates. This skill covers building a two-tier CA hierarchy (Root CA +.

xalgorix/xalgorix · 52 tokens

configuring-hsm-for-key-storage

Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) are tamper-resistant physical devices that safeguard cryptographic keys and perform cryptographic operations in a hardened environment. Keys stored in an HSM never lea.

xalgorix/xalgorix · 45 tokens

implementing-aes-encryption-for-data-at-rest

AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is a symmetric block cipher standardized by NIST (FIPS 197) used to protect classified and sensitive data. This skill covers implementing AES-256 encryption in GCM m.

xalgorix/xalgorix · 52 tokens

starknet-js

Use when writing or debugging JavaScript/TypeScript that interacts with Starknet through the starknet.js SDK — building Call objects or calldata, encoding/decoding Cairo types (felt252, u256, structs, arrays, spans, ByteArray, Option/Result/custom enums), or working with contracts, accounts, providers, transactions…

starknet-io/starknet.js · 79 tokens