starting-a-new-project

starting-a-new-project is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from JetBrains/thinkrail. It costs 61 tokens per session (1,226 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A workflow for turning a raw idea into a short requirements document for a brand-new project. It applies only when the workspace has no code or existing project decisions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to define the goal and requirements of an empty project, settle its first version, and save those decisions in goal-and-requirements.md.
Why use it?
It gives an unformed idea a buildable first scope without adding unconfirmed features. It also records decisions incrementally and passes later feature work to a separate planning process.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex ✓ vendor

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to define the goal and requirements of an empty project, settle its first version, and save those decisions in goal-and-requirements.md.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jetbrains/thinkrail/starting-a-new-project
About the project

JetBrains/thinkrail is a desktop and mobile client that embeds the pi coding agent inside an interface for editing code and managing development workspaces. Developers use it to work on Git repositories through separate worktrees, a Monaco editor, terminals, Git views, specifications, and concurrent agent sessions. The catalogue entries are skills and instructions for its agent-based development workflow.

JetBrains/thinkrail · 427 stars · on GitHub · thinkrail.ai

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 JetBrains/thinkrail --skill starting-a-new-project
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JetBrains/thinkrail

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 starting-a-new-project

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jetbrains/thinkrail/starting-a-new-project/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jetbrains/thinkrail/starting-a-new-project)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jetbrains/thinkrail/starting-a-new-project"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jetbrains/thinkrail/starting-a-new-project/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for starting-a-new-project

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jetbrains/thinkrail/starting-a-new-project"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jetbrains/thinkrail/starting-a-new-project.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 61 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,226 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Excessive Agency · line 40
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00061 $0.01226
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00613
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00245
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00123

Measured 10d ago against content hash bb3a3f740f32, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

starting-a-new-project 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 10d 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/pi-thinkrail-workflow/skills/starting-a-new-project/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Starting a new project

The workspace is empty: no code, no decisions. Turn the user's idea into one clear, buildable document — goal-and-requirements.md — then hand off to brainstorming for the features that follow.

Hold the writing-specs bar. Read that concept skill before saving anything — it carries the short / honest / on-rails rules every section you save must meet.

Method

  1. Build on what's already said. Never re-ask what the request already told you.
  2. Infer, then confirm — propose a concrete draft and let the user correct it; a suggestion beats an open question. Compose ask_user_question rounds per the asking-user-questions concept skill (read it before the first round — it carries the option, confirmation, and degradation norms).
  3. MVP first. The right v1 is smaller than the user expects. Every v1 capability must justify itself.
  4. Save incrementally. Create the file as soon as the first section is settled, then add each confirmed section in template order. Don't batch; don't invent unconfirmed content.
  5. A skipped question is not a blocker — proceed on the current model and note real gaps inline.

Working model (infer from the request; never ask these directly)

audience:   personal | public | both        domain: what space this is in
tech:       stack mentioned, or null         scope:  small | large
depth:      light | standard | full          creator_is_user: does the maker use it?

depth scales the document: light = a one-liner idea → a few lines; full = named competitors / multiple user types → a full PRD. It can only grow during the conversation, never shrink.

Fast path — pre-filled brief

If the request already reads like a spec (several headings or a multi-section brief), parse it, treat those sections as confirmed, save them immediately, and only pursue what's genuinely missing and required by depth. Don't ask the user to confirm what they already wrote. The one always-offered extra is alternatives research (below).

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 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. 10d ago First seen · 89 lines · 61 tokens per session scan A bb3a3f740f32

Subscribe to this mod's changes

starting-a-new-project is a skill published in the GitHub repository JetBrains/thinkrail (427 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 61 tokens to every session and 1,226 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

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