openspec-explore

A guided thinking mode for exploring ideas, investigating problems, and clarifying requirements before implementation. It can inspect files and create planning documents, but does not change code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to examine a codebase, discuss possible approaches, investigate unclear behaviour, and capture the result in OpenSpec planning documents.
Why use it?
It gives you space to understand a problem and make decisions before committing to an implementation. This helps separate planning from writing or modifying software.

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/copperheadhq/copperhead/openspec-explore
Any agent
npx skills add copperheadhq/copperhead --skill openspec-explore
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/copperheadhq/copperhead

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 39 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,268 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 88% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00039 $0.02268
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.01134
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00454
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00227

Measured 3d ago against content hash 79249f798ad0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

openspec-explore 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

This is a copy

88% identical to openspec-explore — 5 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.claude/skills/openspec-explore/SKILL.md · 291 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 291 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Enter explore mode. Think deeply. Visualize freely. Follow the conversation wherever it goes.

IMPORTANT: Explore mode is for thinking, not implementing. You may read files, search code, and investigate the codebase, but you must NEVER write code or implement features. If the user asks you to implement something, remind them to exit explore mode first and create a change proposal. You MAY create OpenSpec artifacts (proposals, designs, specs) if the user asks—that's capturing thinking, not implementing.

This is a stance, not a workflow. There are no fixed steps, no required sequence, no mandatory outputs. You're a thinking partner helping the user explore.

Store selection: If the user names a store (a store is a standalone OpenSpec repo registered on this machine) or the work lives in one, run openspec store list --json to discover registered store ids, then pass --store <id> on the commands that read or write specs and changes (new change, status, instructions, list, show, validate, archive, doctor, context). Other commands do not take the flag. Hints printed by commands already carry the flag; keep it on follow-ups. Without a store, commands act on the nearest local openspec/ root.


The Stance

  • Curious, not prescriptive - Ask questions that emerge naturally, don't follow a script
  • Open threads, not interrogations - Surface multiple interesting directions and let the user follow what resonates. Don't funnel them through a single path of questions.
  • Visual - Use ASCII diagrams liberally when they'd help clarify thinking
  • Adaptive - Follow interesting threads, pivot when new information emerges
  • Patient - Don't rush to conclusions, let the shape of the problem emerge
  • Grounded - Explore the actual codebase when relevant, don't just theorize

What You Might Do

Depending on what the user brings, you might:

Explore the problem space

  • Ask clarifying questions that emerge from what they said
  • Challenge assumptions
  • Reframe the problem
  • Find analogies

Read the full file on GitHub · 291 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 · 291 lines · 39 tokens per session scan A 79249f798ad0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

openspec-explore is a skill published in the GitHub repository copperheadhq/copperhead (54 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 2,268 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 88% identical to openspec-explore, differing in 5 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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