spectre-kickoff

spectre-kickoff is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from joenandez/spectre. It costs 90 tokens per session (1,210 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A project-kickoff research tool for unclear software projects or features. It examines the codebase and outside practices before producing a kickoff document, gap analysis, and first-version path.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting a new feature or project and you need research, possible approaches, or a recommendation for the first version.
Why use it?
It helps clarify the problem, identify missing pieces, and choose a practical initial scope before detailed planning begins.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter, but also agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions subagents; names the TodoWrite tool.

Good fit Use it when starting a new feature or project and you need research, possible approaches, or a recommendation for the first version.

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

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 spectre-kickoff

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/joenandez/spectre/spectre-kickoff/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/joenandez/spectre/spectre-kickoff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/joenandez/spectre/spectre-kickoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/joenandez/spectre/spectre-kickoff/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 spectre-kickoff

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/joenandez/spectre/spectre-kickoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/joenandez/spectre/spectre-kickoff.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 90 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,210 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 pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00090 $0.01210
Opus 5 $0.00045 $0.00605
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00242
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00121

Measured yesterday against content hash 79997399cb36, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

spectre-kickoff 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.

plugins/spectre-codex/skills/spectre-kickoff/SKILL.md · 63 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 63 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

kickoff

Deep research entry point: investigate the codebase and external best practices, then hand off a written kickoff doc with a gap analysis and MVP path. Clear on WHAT to produce; the research method is yours.

Inputs

  • $ARGUMENTS — the project/feature context (the current command arguments). If empty, ask the user for it before any tools.
  • Optional explicit managed feature name/root or an artifact beneath one.
  • Any docs the user references — read them FULLY in main context (not via subagent): vision, constraints, decisions, open questions.

Working set (late-bound — read at runtime, never inline)

  • Codebase, via read-only research agents (see Method).
  • FEATURE_ROOT = .spectre/features/<feature-name>/, resolved from the input or proposed below; current git commit/branch for metadata + permalinks.

Feature root contract

  • Reuse a managed FEATURE_ROOT only when explicit/current-thread evidence ties it to this work (physical directory wins; never branch/recency/lifecycle/scans); distinct work ignores ambient roots. Otherwise, including on collision, standalone MUST first load and follow Skill(spectre-feature-root) through DONE; orchestrated calls escalate. Keep writes beneath it and pass it unchanged.

Method / guardrails

  1. Acknowledge first. Open with a reply naming what we're exploring, the proposed feature name/root, the decision we're heading toward, and what success looks like. No tool calls in this first turn.

  2. Decompose the project into research areas (components, dirs/files, patterns, data flows, code to extend); track them with TodoWrite.

  3. Research in parallel, read-only — locator → analyzer-on-findings → breadth. Spawn follow-ups if a thread is shallow. Use Context7 MCP for central 3rd-party libs.

    Agent Task Required output
    @spectre_finder relevant files, entry points, handlers, models file paths by domain
    @spectre_analyst data flow, dependencies, behavior, edge cases file:line for ALL findings
    @spectre_patterns similar impls, patterns to follow/avoid code examples w/ file:line
    @spectre_web_research best practices, prior art, pitfalls findings WITH links

Read the full file on GitHub · 63 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 Changed · +2 lines 79997399cb36
  2. 5d ago Changed 0944e1e68c17
  3. 11d ago First seen · 61 lines · 90 tokens per session scan A 6f0259dbeaa9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

spectre-kickoff is a skill published in the GitHub repository joenandez/spectre (161 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 90 tokens to every session and 1,210 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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