What is phase-methodology?

A workflow for defining an investigation brief and planning the research method. It includes conversations with the user, approval steps, and optional use of a large research model to suggest a plan.

Use it to clarify the question, choose methods, validate the plan, and approve the proposed approach.

It turns a broad request into an agreed research plan before detailed investigation begins.

phase-methodology — Skill for Claude Code by buriedsignals/spotlight

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 buriedsignals/spotlight --skill phase-methodology

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/buriedsignals/spotlight

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install spotlight, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 26 skills, 4 agents.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/buriedsignals/spotlight/phase-methodology/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/buriedsignals/spotlight/phase-methodology)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/buriedsignals/spotlight/phase-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/buriedsignals/spotlight/phase-methodology/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/buriedsignals/spotlight/phase-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/buriedsignals/spotlight/phase-methodology.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 4,099 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin unknown 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00040	$0.04099
Opus 5.5	$0.00016	$0.01640
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00008	$0.00820
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00410

Measured 7d ago against content hash 38b3f4f9e308, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

phase-methodology scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 7d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

fetch(url="<URL>", output_path="{CASE_DIR}/research/lead-source.md")

skills/phase-methodology/SKILL.md · 321 lines

The source is not reproduced here

A licence we could not identify

The repository carries a LICENSE file, but it is custom or dual enough that GitHub cannot name it and neither can this catalogue. Unknown terms are not permission, so the body is not copied here. Read the licence at the source and decide for yourself.

Read it on GitHub

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.

7d ago Changed · +16 lines 38b3f4f9e308
15d ago Changed · +10 lines eedecbee06df
18d ago Changed · +18 lines 14ee38a8076b
19d ago Changed · +11 lines 7c6f966a42c7
20d ago Changed · +54 lines 24486184a995
21d ago Changed · -7 tokens per session 268d72b25ed2
23d ago Changed 4cd61fce4b4b
29d ago Changed 4bd902e6c2f9
1mo ago Changed · +17 lines e3df4f5b270f
2mo ago First seen · 195 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A bd3a1bea8075

Subscribe to this mod's changes

phase-methodology is a skill published in the GitHub repository buriedsignals/spotlight (60 stars, last pushed today), with no licence file. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 4,099 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Planning Research ai-agents fact-checking investigations journalism open-source osint

phase-methodology next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
phase-methodologyburiedsignals/spotlight	Skill	60	today	none	A	40	Claude Code
source-verificationur-grue/autopunk-media-skills	Skill	46	2mo ago	MIT	A	82	Claude Code
fact-check-promptur-grue/autopunk-media-skills	Skill	46	2mo ago	MIT	A	55	Claude Code
ethics-review-checklistur-grue/autopunk-media-skills	Skill	46	2mo ago	MIT	A	46	Claude Code
source-credibility-briefur-grue/autopunk-media-skills	Skill	46	2mo ago	MIT	A	38	Claude Code
statistics-fact-checkerur-grue/autopunk-media-skills	Skill	46	2mo ago	MIT	A	36	Claude Code
osint-tool-catalogur-grue/autopunk-media-skills	Skill	46	2mo ago	MIT	A	43	Claude Code