build-spec

build-spec is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Lab2A/metalworks. It costs 225 tokens per session (1,519 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow that turns a completed demand report into a BuildSpec: a written plan for a coding agent to implement. Each proposed feature is linked to a real demand theme and supporting quotes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to define core features, choose or confirm a target platform such as web, mobile, SDK, or command line, and provide the agent with an evidence-backed build harness.
Why use it?
It connects product decisions to evidence, so an agent has clearer guidance about what to build and why.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the metalworks plugin — 22 skills, 1 hook, 1 MCP server shipped together

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/lab2a/metalworks/build-spec
Any agent
npx skills add Lab2A/metalworks --skill build-spec
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Lab2A/metalworks

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install metalworks, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 22 skills, 1 hook, 1 MCP server.

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 build-spec

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lab2a/metalworks/build-spec.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lab2a/metalworks/build-spec)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lab2a/metalworks/build-spec"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lab2a/metalworks/build-spec.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 225 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,519 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 $0.00225 $0.01519
Opus 5 $0.00112 $0.00759
Sonnet 5 $0.00045 $0.00304
Haiku 4.5 $0.00022 $0.00152

Measured 5d ago against content hash 991c1245310f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

build-spec 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.

plugin/skills/build-spec/SKILL.md · 92 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 92 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Preamble (run first)

Before any other tool, run the preflight MCP tool (or metalworks preflight on the CLI). If it reports setup issues or that an update is available, surface that to the user in one line and help them resolve it (install the missing extra/key, or pip install -U metalworks) before continuing. Skip only if the user has already passed preflight this session.

Read the reference; never reverse-engineer the source. The moment you need to know how metalworks behaves — provider/model resolution, which source/reader runs, config precedence, an error you hit, or the async run loop — STOP and read docs/operating-metalworks.md (bundled with this plugin) before opening any file under src/. It is the source of truth; do not derive behavior from source. (Full docs: https://metalworks.lab2a.ai/docs.) For a long-running run, poll status with the Monitor tool or a bounded loop — never a blind sleep.

You are turning one finished demand report into a build the user's OWN coding agent will execute. metalworks researched and specced; it does not write the product. The output is two things: a grounded BuildSpec and an on-disk harness that carries the evidence forward so the downstream agent cannot drift from validated demand.

Steps

  1. Get the report_id. If the user hasn't run a report yet, point them at /demand-report first — the build spec needs a finished report to ground in.

  2. Generate the spec. On the CLI this is one command that also writes the harness: metalworks build init <report_id> --dest ./build --surface auto --base <stack-hint>. Via MCP, call the build_spec tool with the report_id (optionally surface and stack) to get the BuildSpec JSON without writing files. It needs a chat + embedding provider (Tier 2) — a configured key, or the keyless Claude Code login when metalworks[claude-code] is installed. Leave --surface auto (the default) to let the spec pick the surface and explain why; pin it (e.g. --surface cli) when the user already knows the build shape.

Read the full file on GitHub · 92 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 · 92 lines · 225 tokens per session scan A 991c1245310f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

build-spec is a skill published in the GitHub repository Lab2A/metalworks (6 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 225 tokens to every session and 1,519 once invoked, about $0.0011 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.

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