openspec-onboard

A guided introduction to OpenSpec, a system for describing and tracking code changes with specification files. It walks through a complete workflow while doing real work in a codebase.

In plain words
What is it for?
Checking the command-line tool, creating and progressing a change, implementing it, and completing the full workflow cycle.
Why use it?
It helps someone new learn the workflow by following one complete example instead of reading isolated instructions.

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/fission-ai/openspec/openspec-onboard
Any agent
npx skills add Fission-AI/OpenSpec --skill openspec-onboard
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Fission-AI/OpenSpec

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 26 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,801 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 $0.00026 $0.03801
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.01901
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00760
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00380

Measured yesterday against content hash 9add352e1582, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

openspec-onboard 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 yesterday.

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

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/openspec-onboard/SKILL.md · 561 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 561 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Guide the user through their first complete OpenSpec workflow cycle. This is a teaching experience—you'll do real work in their codebase while explaining each step.

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, schemas, view). Once selected, treat --store <id> as sticky for the rest of the workflow. Every unscoped example of those commands below is shorthand: before running it, append the flag. For example, run openspec status --change "<name>" --json --store "<id>", not the unscoped form shown below. 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.


Preflight

Before starting, check if the OpenSpec CLI is installed:

# Unix/macOS
openspec --version 2>&1 || echo "CLI_NOT_INSTALLED"
# Windows (PowerShell)
# if (Get-Command openspec -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) { openspec --version } else { echo "CLI_NOT_INSTALLED" }

If CLI not installed:

OpenSpec CLI is not installed. Install it first, then come back to /openspec-onboard.

Stop here if not installed.


Phase 1: Welcome

Display:

## Welcome to OpenSpec!

I'll walk you through a complete change cycle—from idea to implementation—using a real task in your codebase. Along the way, you'll learn the workflow by doing it.

**What we'll do:**
1. Pick a small, real task in your codebase
2. Explore the problem briefly
3. Create a change (the container for our work)
4. Build the artifacts: proposal → specs → design → tasks
5. Implement the tasks
6. Archive the completed change

**Time:** ~15-20 minutes

Let's start by finding something to work on.

Read the full file on GitHub · 561 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. yesterday First seen · 561 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 9add352e1582

Subscribe to this mod's changes

openspec-onboard is a skill published in the GitHub repository Fission-AI/OpenSpec (66,714 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 3,801 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 2026-08-30.