research-phase

research-phase is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from alchemiststudiosDOTai/harness-engineering. It costs 88 tokens per session (1,324 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A codebase-mapping process that records where files, symbols, patterns, and connections are found in a project.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to locate functions, classes, imports, exports, web routes, and handlers, and to document the project's directory structure and dependencies.
Why use it?
It gives developers a factual map of an unfamiliar codebase without mixing in redesign suggestions or opinions about code quality.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the harness-engineering plugin — 8 skills, 1 command, 1 agent 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 skills/alchemiststudiosdotai/harness-engineering/research-phase
Any agent
npx skills add alchemiststudiosDOTai/harness-engineering --skill research-phase
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alchemiststudiosDOTai/harness-engineering

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install harness-engineering, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 8 skills, 1 command, 1 agent.

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/skills/alchemiststudiosdotai/harness-engineering/research-phase.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alchemiststudiosdotai/harness-engineering/research-phase)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alchemiststudiosdotai/harness-engineering/research-phase"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alchemiststudiosdotai/harness-engineering/research-phase.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 88 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,324 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 $0.00088 $0.01324
Opus 5 $0.00044 $0.00662
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00265
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00132

Measured 5d ago against content hash ece951a2cb07, 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 5d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 4 executable files (scripts/ast-scan.sh, scripts/dependency-graph.sh, scripts/structure-map.sh, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

skills/research-phase/SKILL.md · 194 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 194 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Phase

Map and document codebase structure using structural analysis. This skill produces factual maps only—no suggestions, no recommendations, no opinions. Document what exists, where it lives, and how it connects.

Core Principle

Map, don't suggest. The output is a structural map that another developer (or Claude instance) can use to navigate the codebase. Include:

  • File paths with line numbers
  • Pattern locations
  • Dependency relationships
  • Symbol definitions

Exclude:

  • Improvement suggestions
  • Refactoring recommendations
  • "Should" or "could" statements
  • Opinions about code quality

Available Scripts

scripts/ast-scan.sh - Structural Pattern Scanner

Find code patterns using ast-grep.

# Scan for all function definitions
scripts/ast-scan.sh functions src/

# Find all class definitions
scripts/ast-scan.sh classes

# Find all exports
scripts/ast-scan.sh exports lib/

# Find API routes
scripts/ast-scan.sh routes

# Available patterns: functions, classes, exports, imports, types, components, routes, handlers, all

scripts/structure-map.sh - Directory Tree

Generate filtered directory structure.

# Basic tree (auto-filters node_modules, .git, etc.)
scripts/structure-map.sh ./

# Limit depth
scripts/structure-map.sh ./ --depth 3

# Code files only
scripts/structure-map.sh src/ --code-only

# Include file counts
scripts/structure-map.sh ./ --with-stats

scripts/symbol-index.sh - Public Symbol Index

Extract all exported/public symbols.

# Index all exports
scripts/symbol-index.sh src/

# Shows: exported functions, classes, types, interfaces, constants

scripts/dependency-graph.sh - Import Tracer

Map dependency relationships.

# Show all imports
scripts/dependency-graph.sh src/

# Trace specific file's dependencies
scripts/dependency-graph.sh ./ --file src/core/auth.ts

# Shows: what it imports + what imports it

Research Workflow

Step 1: Deploy 3 Research Tasks in Parallel

Read the full file on GitHub · 194 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 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. 5d ago First seen · 194 lines · 88 tokens per session scan A ece951a2cb07

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-phase is a skill published in the GitHub repository alchemiststudiosDOTai/harness-engineering (104 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 88 tokens to every session and 1,324 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.

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