squad-version-check

A technical reference for how the Squad command-line tool records its version, upgrades project files, and checks npm for newer releases. Squad is a command-line tool whose package is published through npm.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect version stamping, understand `squad upgrade`, verify the installed package version, or check the npm registry for the latest release.
Why use it?
It explains which files an upgrade preserves or replaces and how version information is found, reducing surprises when investigating or changing upgrade behavior.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/bradygaster/squad/squad-version-check
Any agent
npx skills add bradygaster/squad --skill squad-version-check
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bradygaster/squad

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,706 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 $0.00052 $0.01706
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00853
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00341
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00171

Measured 3d ago against content hash c533dd40c207, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

squad-version-check 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 3d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

.squad/skills/squad-version-check/SKILL.md · 170 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 170 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

SKILL: Squad CLI Internals — Version Stamping & Upgrade Mechanics

Confidence: medium Discovered by: Data Date: 2026-05-26 Validated in: Issue #1173 recon (bradygaster/squad)


What This Skill Covers

Reusable knowledge about how @bradygaster/squad-cli stamps its version into squad.agent.md, how squad upgrade works, what it preserves vs. overwrites, and how to probe the npm registry for the latest version from a coordinator prompt.


Package & Registry Facts

  • Package name: @bradygaster/squad-cli
  • Registry: npm (public)
  • CLI binary: squad (registered via package.json#bin.squad)
  • Node version requirement: Node ≥22.5.0 (ESM-only codebase)

Version Stamping Mechanism

Source file: dist/cli/core/version.js

Three functions:

getPackageVersion()

Walks up from the compiled JS file to find package.json. Returns pkg.version. Works from both dist/cli/core/version.js and a bundled root cli.js. Returns '0.0.0' as fallback if not found.

stampVersion(filePath, version)

Mutates squad.agent.md in three places:

  1. HTML comment: <!-- version: {version} --> (must be on the line immediately after frontmatter ---)
  2. Identity line: - **Version:** {version}
  3. Greeting instruction: backtick-quoted `Squad v{version}`

Called by: both init and upgrade — after copying the template to the destination.

readInstalledVersion(filePath)

Reads the stamped version back from squad.agent.md:

  1. First tries HTML comment format: /<!-- version: ([0-9.]+(?:-[a-z]+(?:\.\d+)?)?) -->/
  2. Falls back to old frontmatter format: /^version:\s*"([^"]+)"/m
  3. Returns '0.0.0' on any error

squad upgrade Behavior

Source file: dist/cli/core/upgrade.js

What gets overwritten:

  • squad.agent.md — full overwrite from template, then stampVersion()
  • Files with overwriteOnUpgrade: true in TEMPLATE_MANIFEST: casting JSON files, template .md files, copilot-instructions.md (if @copilot enabled)
  • GitHub Actions workflows — from templates/workflows/; non-npm projects get type-aware stubs
  • Runs runMigrations() after file copy

Read the full file on GitHub · 170 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. 3d ago First seen · 170 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A c533dd40c207

Subscribe to this mod's changes

squad-version-check is a skill published in the GitHub repository bradygaster/squad (3,150 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 1,706 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories