alive:search-world

alive:search-world is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from alivecontext/alive. It costs 64 tokens per session (965 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A search workflow for finding decisions, people, files, references, insights, and activity logs across an organised collection of project areas. It searches structured notes, persistent knowledge, history, tasks, and working files.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when you know something exists but not where it is. Search for a person, decision, task, file, reference, insight, or past session, with optional filters such as status, priority, assignee, or tag.
Why use it?
Information that was previously saved can be difficult to locate when it is spread across projects and records. This workflow searches several kinds of stored context in a defined order.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the alive plugin — 17 skills, 5 hooks 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/alivecontext/alive/search-world
Any agent
npx skills add alivecontext/alive --skill search-world
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alivecontext/alive

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install alive, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills, 5 hooks.

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 alive:search-world

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivecontext/alive/search-world.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivecontext/alive/search-world)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivecontext/alive/search-world"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivecontext/alive/search-world.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 64 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 965 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 $0.00064 $0.00965
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00483
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00193
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00097

Measured 5d ago against content hash e43737e29c3a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alive:search-world 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.

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.

plugins/alive/skills/search-world/SKILL.md · 103 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 103 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Find

Search across the world. One verb for all retrieval.


How It Searches

Priority order — fastest and highest signal first:

1. Frontmatter Scan (fast, structured)

Scan _kernel/key.md across all walnuts. Matches on: type, goal, people names, tags, links, reference descriptions.

2. Insights Search (standing knowledge)

Scan _kernel/insights.md across relevant walnuts. Domain knowledge that persists — "Nova Station test windows are Tue-Thu only."

3. Log Search (decisions, history)

Search _kernel/log.md entries. Signed decisions, session summaries, what happened when. Frontmatter first (last-entry, summary), then entry bodies.

4. Task Search (work queue)

Search tasks across all walnuts using tasks.py list with the --world and --search flags:

python3 "$ALIVE_PLUGIN_ROOT/scripts/tasks.py" list --world "$WORLD_ROOT" --search "{query}"

Returns JSON with tasks matching the query across all walnuts. Each result includes a walnut field for attribution. Combine with --status, --priority, --assignee, --tag for narrower results.

5. Working File Search (drafts)

Scan */ across walnuts (bundles are flat in walnut root). Find drafts by name, version, age, squirrel attribution.

6. Bundle Manifest Search (captured content metadata)

Search */context.manifest.yaml files across walnuts (bundles are flat in walnut root). Match on frontmatter: type, date, source, participants, subject.

7. Raw Reference Search (expensive)

Load actual raw files. Only on explicit request — "read me that email from Jax."

8. Context Source Cascade (if nothing found locally)

If steps 1-7 return nothing and the user believes it exists, automatically fan out to configured context sources before reporting "not found." Check .alive/preferences.yaml context_sources: for what's available — any configured MCP server, sync script, or API connection is a valid search target.

One-hop inference applies: if the user says "the setup guide I sent Sarah" and an email integration is configured, that's enough to trigger a search without being asked. The system should resolve across its full context surface — local files are not the only source of truth.

Read the full file on GitHub · 103 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. 5d ago First seen · 103 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A e43737e29c3a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alive:search-world is a skill published in the GitHub repository alivecontext/alive (127 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 965 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 2026-08-30.