kn-research

kn-research is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from knowns-dev/knowns. It costs 33 tokens per session (1,724 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A read-only investigation workflow for understanding existing code, project knowledge, patterns, errors, APIs, and external facts before implementation. It can examine more than one repository when those repositories are supplied.

In plain words
What is it for?
Finding relevant files and symbols, studying neighboring implementations, checking project records, investigating errors, and researching features across repository boundaries.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of adding code without knowing how the current system works or where related behavior already exists.

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/knowns-dev/knowns/kn-research
Any agent
npx skills add knowns-dev/knowns --skill kn-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/knowns-dev/knowns

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 kn-research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/knowns-dev/knowns/kn-research.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/knowns-dev/knowns/kn-research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/knowns-dev/knowns/kn-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/knowns-dev/knowns/kn-research.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,724 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 $0.00033 $0.01724
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00862
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00345
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00172

Measured 5d ago against content hash f5876e534760, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

kn-research 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 5d 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.

internal/instructions/skills/kn-research/SKILL.md · 185 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 185 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Researching the Codebase

Announce: "Using kn-research for [topic]."

Core principle: UNDERSTAND WHAT EXISTS BEFORE ADDING NEW CODE.

Research is read-only by default. Do not create or update tasks, docs, memories, decisions, or source files unless the user explicitly requests persistence or an approved parent workflow already authorizes it.

Inputs

  • Topic, feature, API, error, file pattern, or task ID
  • Suspected paths, symbols, packages, refs, or external facts to verify
  • Optional: additional repository roots when the feature spans more than one repository

Multi-Repo Scope

A feature can span repositories that do not share a Knowns store, such as a frontend and a backend. When the user supplies additional repository roots, research all of them before drawing conclusions, and keep their boundaries explicit.

  • Knowns search, retrieve, structural resolution, and code intelligence are scoped to the current project. For an additional root, use file and code search against that root directly.
  • Additional roots are read-only. Never create or modify tasks, docs, memories, decisions, or source files outside the current project, even when the user authorizes persistence here.
  • Prefix every file reference with its repository name, because the same relative path often exists on both sides:
knowns-web/src/features/orders/hooks/useRefund.ts:28
knowns-api/internal/services/refund_service.go:142
  • Report conventions, constraints, and existing patterns per repository. Two repositories rarely share testing, validation, or naming rules, and assuming they do produces a plan that is wrong on one side.
  • State which side owns each open question, so the finding can become a cross-repo handoff without further triage.

Search Order

Use the narrowest surface that can answer the question, then widen deliberately:

  1. Project docs, memories, and current decisions
  2. Structural relations from relevant specs/docs
  3. Related and completed tasks
  4. Existing code paths and implementations
  5. Adjacent tests, templates, and validation logic
  6. External sources only when the answer depends on current or upstream information

Read the full file on GitHub · 185 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. 5d ago First seen · 185 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A f5876e534760

Subscribe to this mod's changes

kn-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository knowns-dev/knowns (242 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 1,724 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 2026-08-30.

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