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/skills/search-first/SKILL.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/skills/affaan-m/ecc/search-first)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/affaan-m/ecc/search-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/affaan-m/ecc/search-first.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>- Socket pass
- Snyk warn
- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- medium Excessive Agency · line 168 Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
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 | $0.00046 | $0.01656 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00023 | $0.00828 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00009 | $0.00331 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00166 |
Grade A, and why
search-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 4d 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.
Copies of this mod
2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- search-first — 97% identical, 4 lines differ
- search-first — 91% identical, 20 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 180 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
/search-first — Research Before You Code
Systematizes the "search for existing solutions before implementing" workflow.
Trigger
Use this skill when:
- Starting a new feature that likely has existing solutions
- Adding a dependency or integration
- The user asks "add X functionality" and you're about to write code
- Before creating a new utility, helper, or abstraction
Scope and Approval Rules
Default to read-only research: inspect the repo, package metadata, docs, and public examples before recommending a dependency or integration. Do not install packages, configure MCP servers, publish artifacts, open PRs, or make external write actions from this skill unless the user has explicitly approved that action in the current task.
When a candidate requires credentials, paid services, network writes, or project-wide config changes, return a recommendation and approval checkpoint instead of applying it directly.
Workflow
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1. NEED ANALYSIS │
│ Define what functionality is needed │
│ Identify language/framework constraints │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 2. PARALLEL SEARCH (researcher agent) │
│ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ │
│ │ npm / │ │ MCP / │ │ GitHub / │ │
│ │ PyPI │ │ Skills │ │ Web │ │
│ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 3. EVALUATE │
│ Score candidates (functionality, maint, │
│ community, docs, license, deps) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 4. DECIDE │
│ ┌─────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌─────────┐ │
│ │ Adopt │ │ Extend │ │ Build │ │
│ │ as-is │ │ /Wrap │ │ Custom │ │
│ └─────────┘ └──────────┘ └─────────┘ │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 5. APPROVAL CHECKPOINT / IMPLEMENT │
│ Recommend package / MCP / custom code │
│ Apply only after explicit approval │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
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.
- 4d ago First seen · 180 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A 11fd42cf56e0
search-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository affaan-m/ECC (251,781 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 1,656 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
pr-reviewer
Reviews a diff or security scope read-only using evidence-tiered findings, structural and context-error rubrics, and repository review policy. Use when asked to "review my changes", "structural review", "review for AI patterns", or "security audit". For applying fixes use tidy; for UI defects use ui-design.
ui-design
Designs and builds React/Next/Tailwind UI and audits visual and interaction defects. Use when asked to "build a landing page", "extract our design system", "add dark mode", "make this responsive", "remove UI slop", or "audit this component". For product decisions use product-design; for browser measurements use…
pr-babysitter
Monitors or repairs an open GitHub PR: CI failures, conflicts, review threads, and merge readiness, reporting state changes. Use when asked to "watch this PR", "fix CI", "resolve conflicts", or "address review comments". For PR metadata use pr-creator; for npm release PRs use autoship.
autoship
Runs a changesets npm release through the version PR, CI publish, and registry verification. Use when asked to "release this package", "autoship", "merge Version Packages", or diagnose a release that did not publish. For feature PRs use pr-creator or pr-babysitter.
ax-audit
Audits agentic products for tool parity, authority, approval payloads, recovery, and trust using 27 rules and a ship verdict. Use when asked for an "AX audit", to review an agent approval flow, or whether an agent can operate the product. For human-facing API ergonomics use dx-audit; for ordinary UI use ui-design.
product-design
Specifies interaction choices, action scope, reversibility, recovery, and reachable states. Use when asked to "design the flow", "should delete be undoable", "choose the control", or "review this product decision". For visual implementation use ui-design; for motion use ui-animation; for wording use copywriting.