start

start is a skill for Claude Code from bengous/claude-code-plugins. It costs 99 tokens per session (1,724 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A planning skill for software changes that first settles design choices, then writes a reviewable plan before implementation. It can also identify changes small enough to make without a plan.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for exploring a change, deciding between design options, writing plans and supporting files, and organizing implementation into checked vertical slices.
Why use it?
It prevents coding from starting while important choices are unresolved and gives reviewers a clear way to check the proposed work.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the vellum plugin — 2 skills, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit It is for exploring a change, deciding between design options, writing plans and supporting files, and organizing implementation into checked vertical slices.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/start
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.

Any agent
npx skills add bengous/claude-code-plugins --skill start
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bengous/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install vellum, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 2 skills, 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 start

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/start/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/start)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/start"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/start/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for start

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/start"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/start.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 99 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,724 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00099 $0.01724
Opus 5.5 $0.00040 $0.00690
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00020 $0.00345
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00172

Measured 17d ago against content hash db74a6ac7791, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start 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 17d 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.

vellum/skills/start/SKILL.md · 66 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 66 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Plan at the frontiers

Planning writes the plan and its artifacts, nothing else. No code edit until the reviewer approves the plan. A throwaway prototype lives in the working directory and is not kept.

Explore, then let the reviewer pick each next step: settle the choices, draw a screen, try a throwaway, or plan. The plan is written to plan.md at the root of the working directory named by the Working directory: line at the end of this skill, and its artifacts live beside it; without that line, both go to plans/<date>/<slug>/ from the repository root unless the project names another place. Load one reference at a time, when its step starts.

1. Propose the next step

One sentence describes the diff: no plan. Say so, propose /vellum:stop, and implement once the reviewer runs it.

Otherwise explore, then propose the next step with mcp__vellum__propose, never by questions in the terminal: the reason in one sentence, the moves you offer, and the index of the one you recommend. The call waits while the reviewer picks in the review page, and returns their pick: "Accepted: ." for the one you recommended, "Chose: ." for another, one of theirs included, "Own: ." for their own words, "Declined." or "Declined: ." when they want none of the moves: propose others, in the light of the note. Take the step picked, then propose again once it is done. The moves:

  • grill: choices are open and change the architecture, an interface or the scope; choices are their titles. Step 2.
  • mockup: a screen words cannot settle; screen names it. references/visual.md
  • prototype: a question only a throwaway answers; question names it. It lives in the working directory; one that needs the codebase goes through /vellum:stop, and the plan comes in a fresh session from what it taught.
  • plan: nothing left open. Step 3. Once plan.md exists the plan step is done: a proposal that offers it is refused, so revise the plan instead.

AskUserQuestion is refused while vellum is live. A reviewer may also pick a step on their own; it arrives as a prompt in the same words.

Read the full file on GitHub · 66 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 17d ago Changed · +3 lines db74a6ac7791
  2. 21d ago Changed · +9 lines 75f854234095
  3. 23d ago Changed 3392aa618ce6
  4. 24d ago First seen · 54 lines · 99 tokens per session scan A 782cf0e88e3d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start is a skill published in the GitHub repository bengous/claude-code-plugins (5 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 99 tokens to every session and 1,724 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-09-23.