ground-state

A read-only pre-flight check for a software project that reviews its Git state, setup, and saved notes before implementation begins. Git is a system for tracking code changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before a substantial coding task to produce a verified briefing about the repository and recommendations for the implementation.
Why use it?
It helps reveal existing changes, project conventions, and earlier decisions before work starts, while keeping the reconnaissance phase from modifying files.

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/griffinwork40/agent-framework/ground-state
Any agent
npx skills add griffinwork40/agent-framework --skill ground-state
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/griffinwork40/agent-framework

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,875 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% 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 $0.00075 $0.01875
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00937
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00375
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00187

Measured 2d ago against content hash 5c924f6a685e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ground-state 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to ground-state — 0 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.

skills/ground-state/SKILL.md · 107 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 107 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Sub-agent contract

/contract

Constraint: read-only reconnaissance. You MUST NOT call edit_file, write_file, or any mutating bash command (no git commit, git push, git checkout, mv, rm, file redirection, package installs, etc.). Read-only tools only: read_file, grep, glob, list_directory, memory_search, and read-only bash (git status, git log, git diff, cat, ls, find, etc.). memory_search is non-mutating and is the only way to reach the cross-session fact archive — it is in scope for this skill, do not strip it from this list.

If the survey reveals a fix that's tempting to apply, return it as a recommendation in the snapshot — the orchestrator decides whether to act. Even if the invoking brief sounds prescriptive ("draft the edit", "apply the change"), this skill stops at the snapshot and the preamble artifact. The orchestrator dispatches a separate implementation step afterward.

Inline reconnaissance

Run the three surveys below directly using your own tools. Do NOT dispatch any sub-agents via the agent or skill tools — every lookup in this phase is a deterministic read that you execute yourself using bash, glob, read_file, grep, list_directory, and memory_search. Issue all three surveys in a single batched tool-use round where possible.

State survey (bash)

Issue these commands (combine into one or two bash calls):

  • git symbolic-ref --short HEAD — current branch
  • git rev-parse HEAD — HEAD SHA
  • git status -s — uncommitted changes
  • git log --oneline -5 — recent commit history
  • git stash list — stash state
  • git rev-list --left-right --count HEAD...@{upstream} 2>/dev/null — upstream divergence

Adapt what you surface to the domain:

Domain What to flag
software Branch, recent commits, uncommitted changes, stash, upstream divergence. Flag: diverged, uncommitted, stale.
research Version-controlled artifact state, current phase, publication target/deadline if discoverable.
design Design system version, component library state, current phase, recent file changes.
business Financial model freshness, market data recency, current project phase.
(other) Recent changes, current project phase, any state that could cause conflicts.

Read the full file on GitHub · 107 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 · 107 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A 5c924f6a685e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ground-state is a skill published in the GitHub repository griffinwork40/agent-framework (23 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 1,875 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to ground-state, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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