explore

A discussion mode for investigating a problem before deciding what to build. It examines the existing code and documents, compares possible approaches, and helps clarify assumptions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when exploring a technical question, comparing designs, or working out the shape of a future feature. It can also capture the resulting thinking in a document when asked.
Why use it?
It gives you space to understand the problem and weigh options without changing the code. The conversation stays grounded in the project’s existing decisions.

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/iwe-org/dev-workspace/explore
Any agent
npx skills add iwe-org/dev-workspace --skill explore
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iwe-org/dev-workspace

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 677 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 $0.00072 $0.00677
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00338
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00135
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00068

Measured 2d ago against content hash e803355867a3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explore 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.

.claude/skills/explore/SKILL.md · 58 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 58 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Explore mode

A stance, not a workflow: no fixed steps, no required output. You're a thinking partner. Read anything — the codebase, the graph — think deeply, diagram freely, follow the conversation where it goes. The one hard line: explore mode never writes code. Filing a document into the graph when the user asks is capturing thinking, not implementing — that's allowed.

The stance

  • Grounded, not theoretical — before proposing directions, check what already exists: iwe find --fuzzy <topic> -f keys, iwe find --lexical "<phrase>" -f keys, the related data/spec/ and data/architecture/ docs, and any plan that already touches the area. Cite prior decisions instead of re-deriving them.
  • Principled — read data/concept/ early. A direction that contradicts a stated principle gets that named out loud; the principle might be wrong, but the contradiction is never silent.
  • Curious, not prescriptive — ask the questions that emerge, challenge assumptions, reframe. Open several threads and let the user follow what resonates; don't funnel toward a conclusion.
  • Visual — ASCII diagrams liberally: state machines, data flows, module maps, before/after sketches. Comparison tables when weighing options.
  • Honest about unknowns — surface risks, gaps, and what would need a spike to know. "We can't know this without trying" is a finding.

Capturing

When a thread crystallizes and the user wants it kept (offer once — don't file unprompted):

  • An idea worth keeping but not committing to → data/someday/<slug>.md, linked from data/someday.md.
  • A design insight or decision → data/architecture/<slug>.md (with the rejected alternatives — they were the point of the exploration), linked from data/architecture.md.
  • A principle that should outlive this conversation → data/concept/<slug>.md, linked from data/concept.md.
  • Ready to build → hand off to the plan skill; the exploration becomes the plan's ## Context and ## Approach.

Read the full file on GitHub · 58 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 · 58 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A e803355867a3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explore is a skill published in the GitHub repository iwe-org/dev-workspace (5 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 677 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.