ss-research

ss-research is a skill for Codex from bonnguyenitc/specship. It costs 122 tokens per session (1,833 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research workflow for answering questions about topics, technologies, libraries, and decisions using current, reliable sources. It covers questions where versions, APIs, prices, or other outside facts may change.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for researching a technology, comparing options, checking an API, investigating current facts, or preparing a cited answer for a project decision.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of relying on outdated or unsupported information when choosing tools or explaining current technology.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit It is for researching a technology, comparing options, checking an API, investigating current facts, or preparing a cited answer for a project decision.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bonnguyenitc/specship/ss-research
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 bonnguyenitc/specship --skill ss-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bonnguyenitc/specship

Made for: Codex.

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 ss-research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bonnguyenitc/specship/ss-research/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bonnguyenitc/specship/ss-research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bonnguyenitc/specship/ss-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bonnguyenitc/specship/ss-research/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 ss-research

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bonnguyenitc/specship/ss-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bonnguyenitc/specship/ss-research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 122 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,833 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 $0.00122 $0.01833
Opus 5 $0.00061 $0.00916
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00367
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00183

Measured 10d ago against content hash 77719c11f61b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ss-research 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 10d 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.

skills/ss-research/SKILL.md · 161 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 161 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research

Goal: turn a question into a current, verified, cited answer. Model memory has a training cutoff and no sources — never answer a time-sensitive or external-fact question from memory alone.

When to use

  • "Research X", "compare X vs Y", "what's the best library for X?".
  • Choosing a dependency, API, service, or architecture that external facts decide.
  • Anything where "latest", "current", version numbers, pricing, or dates matter.
  • A pipeline stage (spec, plan) hits an open question only the outside world can answer.

Not for questions the repo itself answers — use ss-explore-source / code search for those.

Step 1 — Frame the question

Before any search, pin down (ask the user only if the answer changes the work):

  • Decision: what will this research be used for? Research feeding "pick a library" needs comparison criteria; "how does this API work" needs docs.
  • Freshness: does it need this week's state (releases, pricing) or stable knowledge (algorithms, standards)?
  • Depth: quick answer, comparison table, or deep report? Match effort to it.

Step 2 — Pick the strongest search tool available

Inventory the session's tools first — list what's actually connected (MCP servers, built-ins) instead of defaulting to the generic web search. Then pick the highest rung available on this ladder:

  1. Specialized search MCP — e.g. Exa, Perplexity, Tavily, Brave/Kagi Search, Firecrawl. These return richer, fresher, less SEO-polluted results than generic search; if one is connected, it is the default for open-web questions.
  2. Domain-specific MCP when the question has a domain — library/API docs: Context7, DeepWiki; repos/issues/PRs: a GitHub MCP; internal knowledge: Notion/Confluence/Slack MCPs. A docs tool beats web search for "how do I use library X" every time.
  3. Built-in web search + URL fetch — the fallback when no MCP search is connected. Still fine; just expect more noise.
  4. Browser automation — last resort, only for pages that need JS rendering or a login the fetch tools can't handle.

Read the full file on GitHub · 161 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 10d ago First seen · 161 lines · 122 tokens per session scan A 77719c11f61b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ss-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository bonnguyenitc/specship (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 122 tokens to every session and 1,833 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-08-31.

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