spec-research

spec-research is a skill for Claude Code from komluk/scaffolding. It costs 51 tokens per session (733 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Guidance for writing an OpenSpec proposal, a short document that explains why a software change is needed and what it will affect. It defines the motivation, scope, capabilities, impact, assignments, and rollback plan.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to capture requirements and scope for a spec-driven feature, including affected code, APIs, dependencies, systems, and breaking changes.
Why use it?
It gives a development team a shared explanation of the change before technical design and implementation begin.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the scaffolding plugin — 35 skills, 9 commands, 13 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to capture requirements and scope for a spec-driven feature, including affected code, APIs, dependencies, systems, and breaking changes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/komluk/scaffolding/spec-research
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 komluk/scaffolding --skill spec-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/komluk/scaffolding

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install scaffolding, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 35 skills, 9 commands, 13 agents.

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 spec-research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/komluk/scaffolding/spec-research.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/komluk/scaffolding/spec-research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/komluk/scaffolding/spec-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/komluk/scaffolding/spec-research.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 51 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 733 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 $0.00051 $0.00733
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00367
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00147
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00073

Measured 7d ago against content hash 83497bf7ad0b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

spec-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 7d 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.

skills/spec-research/SKILL.md · 99 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 99 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OpenSpec Proposal Writing

Guide for creating proposal.md -- the WHY document that anchors the entire workflow.

Output Path

Write to: {specs_path}/proposal.md

Path Enforcement: The specs_path MUST be .scaffolding/conversations/{UUID}/specs/ where {UUID} is a valid UUID (format: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx). NEVER use descriptive folder names.

Required Sections

Section Purpose Content
Why Motivation 1-2 sentences. What problem? Why now?
What Changes Scope Bullet list. New capabilities, modifications, removals. Mark BREAKING
Capabilities Contract New + modified capabilities (kebab-case names)
Impact Blast radius Affected code, APIs, dependencies, systems
Agent Assignment Routing Table of agents, roles, artifacts
Rollback Plan Safety Revert points, manual steps, affected systems

Capabilities Section (Critical)

This section creates the contract between proposal and design phases.

New Capabilities

  • Use kebab-case: user-auth, data-export, api-rate-limiting
  • Each becomes a requirement group in design.md
  • Brief description of what the capability covers

Modified Capabilities

  • Only list if spec-level REQUIREMENTS change (not just implementation)
  • Check .scaffolding/openspec/specs/ for existing names
  • Leave empty if no requirement changes

Quality Checklist

  • Goals are concrete and measurable (not vague)
  • Edge cases identified in Impact section
  • All affected agents listed in Agent Assignment
  • Rollback plan has specific revert steps
  • Capabilities use kebab-case naming
  • No implementation details (those go in design.md)
  • Stakeholder impact addressed

Template Structure

## Why

[1-2 sentences: problem + urgency]

## What Changes

- [Specific change 1]
- [Specific change 2]
- **BREAKING**: [Breaking change, if any]

## Capabilities

### New Capabilities
- `capability-name`: Brief description

### Modified Capabilities
- `existing-name`: What requirement is changing

## Impact

[Affected code, APIs, dependencies, systems]

## Agent Assignment

| Agent | Role | Artifacts |
|-------|------|-----------|
| architect | Analyst + Coordinator | proposal.md, design.md, tasks.md |
| researcher | External Research (if needed) | ResearchPack |
| developer | Developer | Source code |
| reviewer | Reviewer | Review report |

## Rollback Plan

- [ ] Identify revert points
- [ ] Document manual rollback steps
- [ ] List affected systems

Read the full file on GitHub · 99 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. 7d ago First seen · 99 lines · 51 tokens per session scan A 83497bf7ad0b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

spec-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository komluk/scaffolding (15 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 51 tokens to every session and 733 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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