research-first

research-first is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from DVNghiem/FlowDeck. It costs 24 tokens per session (2,962 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research checklist for developers who are about to write code, use an unfamiliar interface, add a dependency, or investigate a problem.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps find existing patterns, verify interfaces and behavior, evaluate dependencies, and understand unfamiliar code before making changes.
Why use it?
It removes guesswork by requiring research in the codebase, documentation, online sources, and package registries in that order.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit It helps find existing patterns, verify interfaces and behavior, evaluate dependencies, and understand unfamiliar code before making changes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dvnghiem/flowdeck/research-first
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 DVNghiem/FlowDeck --skill research-first
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DVNghiem/FlowDeck

Made for: Claude Code, 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 research-first

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dvnghiem/flowdeck/research-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dvnghiem/flowdeck/research-first.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,962 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Excessive Agency · line 238
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00024 $0.02962
Opus 5.5 $0.00010 $0.01185
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00005 $0.00592
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00296

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 6da3d8840fdb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-first 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 1mo 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.

src/skills/research-first/SKILL.md · 346 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 346 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/research-first — Research Hierarchy

Enforces a strict research-first workflow before any implementation. Research in order of proximity: codebase first, structured docs second, web third, registries last.

Trigger

Use this skill when:

  • About to write any new function, module, or integration
  • Unsure of an API signature, behavior, or pattern
  • Creating utilities, helpers, or abstractions
  • Evaluating whether to add a dependency
  • Debugging an issue in unfamiliar code

The Four-Level Hierarchy

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     RESEARCH HIERARCHY                      │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  LEVEL 1: CODEBASE                                          │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐                       │
│  │  fdx-graph  │  │  grep.app       │                       │
│  │ (AST graph) │  │  (code search)  │                       │
│  └─────────────┘  └─────────────────┘                       │
│  When: Need patterns, examples, or existing implementations │
│  Escalate: If codebase has no relevant code                 │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  LEVEL 2: STRUCTURED DOCS                                   │
│  ┌─────────────────┐                                        │
│  │  Context7 MCP   │                                        │
│  │  (library docs) │                                        │
│  └─────────────────┘                                        │
│  When: Need accurate API signatures and usage               │
│  Escalate: If library not indexed or docs incomplete        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  LEVEL 3: WEB SEARCH                                        │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐                           │
│  │  Exa MCP    │  │  Web fetch  │                           │
│  │  (semantic) │  │  (direct)   │                           │
│  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘                           │
│  When: Level 1-2 insufficient or library unfamiliar         │
│  Escalate: If no authoritative source found                 │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  LEVEL 4: PACKAGE REGISTRIES                                │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐                           │
│  │  npm / PyPI │  │  GitHub     │                           │
│  │  (search)   │  │  (packages) │                           │
│  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘                           │
│  When: Need to verify existence of utility / alternative    │
│  Escalate: Only if nothing suitable exists                  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Read the full file on GitHub · 346 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. 1mo ago First seen · 346 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A 6da3d8840fdb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository DVNghiem/FlowDeck (36 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 2,962 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-30.

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