cairn-direction

cairn-direction is a skill for Claude Code from isaacriehm/cairn. It costs 32 tokens per session (4,059 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill that turns a loose coding request into a clearer specification and sends the work to an appropriate subagent. A subagent is another agent assigned to handle part of the task.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for bug reports, observations, and code-change requests that need clarification, planning, task dispatch, or a deliberate change of direction.
Why use it?
It helps resolve vague requests and changing requirements before code work begins, while keeping the active task's scope visible.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: when-to-use in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions subagents; names the AskUserQuestion tool; mentions Claude Code.

Part of the cairn plugin — 5 skills, 4 commands, 5 agents, 5 hooks, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it for bug reports, observations, and code-change requests that need clarification, planning, task dispatch, or a deliberate change of direction.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-direction
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 isaacriehm/cairn --skill cairn-direction
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/isaacriehm/cairn

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install cairn, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills, 4 commands, 5 agents, 5 hooks, 1 MCP server.

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 cairn-direction

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-direction.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-direction)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-direction"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-direction.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,059 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.
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 $0.00032 $0.04059
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.02030
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00812
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00406

Measured 8d ago against content hash 5e35b565ebcf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cairn-direction 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 8d 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.

packages/cairn-plugin/skills/cairn-direction/SKILL.md · 326 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 326 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Skill: cairn-direction

Host portability

This skill is shared by Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex. Resolve Cairn MCP tools with the host's native discovery mechanism. AskUserQuestion means the host's structured question UI; if unavailable, ask the same concise A/B/C question in chat and pause. Dispatch plans use the host's native subagent tool. When a named Cairn role is required, read its brief under ../../agents/ and pass that brief to the native subagent; execute inline only when the host has no subagent capability.

Convert loose operator prompts into tightened specs + dispatched work. Long-form playbooks live in docs/PLUGIN_ARCHITECTURE.md §11 (rejection capture, pivot, mission scope, dispatch block, autonomous continuation) and §14 (question quality). This file is the entry-point summary.

Step 0 — preload deferred tools (REQUIRED FIRST)

Preload only the WRITE + judgment tools. The read-only context tools (cairn_in_scope, cairn_canonical_for_topic, cairn_components_in_scope, cairn_component_get, cairn_mission_get, cairn_search) are no longer preloaded — the server now injects your frame for you:

  • SessionStart / UserPromptSubmit inject the working-context header: active task, mission + phase, and the in-scope DEC/INV id index.
  • PostToolUse(Read) injects the DEC/INV bodies + the component slice bound to files as you open them (each once per session).

Load any of those read tools on demand only — when you need a body the header didn't carry, or a mission field the header omitted.

ToolSearch(select:mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_task_create,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_task_complete,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_task_journal_append,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_record_decision,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_component_annotate,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_mission_start,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_mission_accept_draft,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_mission_plan_phase,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_mission_advance,mcp__plugin_cairn_cairn__cairn_mission_set_exit_gate,AskUserQuestion)

Read the full file on GitHub · 326 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. 8d ago First seen · 326 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 5e35b565ebcf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cairn-direction is a skill published in the GitHub repository isaacriehm/cairn (6 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 4,059 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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