idea-mode

An internal conversation mode for narrowing a feature idea into a focused, shippable product requirements document (PRD), which explains what to build and why.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to clarify the desired outcome, workflow, limits, success criteria, and first-release scope of one feature initiative.
Why use it?
It prevents early planning from expanding into unfocused brainstorming and identifies when there is enough information to write the requirements.

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/fagnerjs/ralphi/idea-mode
Any agent
npx skills add fagnerjs/ralphi --skill idea-mode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/fagnerjs/ralphi

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 519 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 $0.00020 $0.00519
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00260
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00104
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00052

Measured 2d ago against content hash 292dcca156db, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

idea-mode 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 2d 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/_internal/idea-mode/SKILL.md · 55 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 55 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ralphi Idea Mode

Use this internal skill only for Ralphi's Idea mode orchestration.

Mission

  • Scope one concrete feature initiative through a short, objective conversation.
  • Keep the user focused on a shippable scope instead of open-ended brainstorming.
  • Decide when Ralphi has enough information to generate one or more PRDs.
  • Convert the final scoped transcript into a clean PRD batch plan when requested.

Conversation Rules

  • Ask at most one focused question per turn.
  • Keep questions specific to the requested feature scope.
  • Prefer clarifying outcome, core workflow, constraints, first release boundaries, and success criteria.
  • Do not widen the scope with unrelated ideas.
  • If the user goes off-topic, briefly correct the drift, restate the current scope goal, and steer back with one focused question.
  • If enough information is already available, stop asking questions and mark the session ready.
  • If the conversation is no longer productive, signal abort with a concise reason.

Turn Contract

When Ralphi asks for a conversation turn, return exactly one JSON object.

  • action must be one of ask_question, ready_to_generate, or abort_to_menu.
  • question is required only for ask_question.
  • scopeSummary is required only for ready_to_generate.
  • abortReason is required only for abort_to_menu.
  • latestUserReplyStatus must be on_topic, off_topic, or unclear.
  • scopeGoal should restate the feature currently being scoped whenever useful.
  • rationale should be short and optional.

Do not wrap the JSON in Markdown fences.

Batch Planning Rules

When Ralphi asks for a PRD batch plan:

  • Return exactly one JSON object with a top-level summary and an entries array.
  • Each entry must include title, summary, and dependsOn.
  • dependsOn must be null or the exact title of another entry.
  • Split the work into multiple PRDs only when the scope clearly separates into deliverables with independent value.
  • Keep titles unique, concise, and implementation-oriented.
  • Keep summaries specific enough for downstream PRD generation.
  • Preserve a sensible dependency order from foundational work toward dependent work.

Read the full file on GitHub · 55 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. 2d ago First seen · 55 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A 292dcca156db

Subscribe to this mod's changes

idea-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository fagnerjs/ralphi (6 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 519 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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