gather-context

gather-context is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from martinemde/dotfiles. It costs 0 tokens per session (1,116 once invoked), scanned A, original, ISC.

A read-only investigation guide for understanding a coding problem through GitHub issues, the codebase, version history, and linked references.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps investigate bugs and feature requests before proposing a solution, with the depth of research adjusted to the problem.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of changing code without understanding why it exists or what other parts depend on it.

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/martinemde/dotfiles/gather-context
Any agent
npx skills add martinemde/dotfiles --skill gather-context
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/martinemde/dotfiles

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 gather-context

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/martinemde/dotfiles/gather-context.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/martinemde/dotfiles/gather-context)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/martinemde/dotfiles/gather-context"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/martinemde/dotfiles/gather-context.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,116 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 $0.00000 $0.01116
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00558
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00223
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00112

Measured 3d ago against content hash 14ba1bc29ca5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

gather-context 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 3d 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.

home/dot_claude/skills/gather-context/SKILL.md · 134 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 134 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Gather Context: Build Understanding Before Acting

Gather comprehensive context about a problem before proposing solutions. Practice Chesterton's Fence: understand why things exist before changing them.

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS

Pre-computed Context

Git root: !`git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || echo "NOT A GIT REPO"`
Remote: !`git remote get-url origin 2>/dev/null || echo "no remote"`
Has gh: !`command -v gh 2>/dev/null && echo "yes" || echo "no"`

Constraints

  • Never use git -C <path> — it rewrites the command prefix, breaking allowed-tools pattern matching.
  • This skill is read-only. Do not modify files, create branches, or make commits.
  • Gather context proportional to the problem size. A typo fix doesn't need 3 Explore agents.

Instructions

1. Determine Context Scope

Assess what kind of investigation is needed based on $ARGUMENTS:

Input Scope
Issue ref (#123) with clear, narrow body Light — fetch issue, quick codebase scan
Issue ref with broad/vague body or multiple comments Full — fetch issue + parallel exploration + history
Problem description (no issue) Full — explore codebase, search history

2. Fetch the Issue (if applicable)

If $ARGUMENTS is an issue reference:

gh issue view <number> --json number,title,body,labels,comments,assignees,milestone,projectItems

Extract:

  • Goal: What needs to change and why
  • Labels: What labels are applied and what they indicate about priority, readiness, type, and scope
  • Comments: Additional requirements, discussion, decisions
  • Linked references: Other issues, PRs, URLs mentioned in body/comments

If comments reference other issues, fetch those too:

Read the full file on GitHub · 134 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. 3d ago First seen · 134 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 14ba1bc29ca5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

gather-context is a skill published in the GitHub repository martinemde/dotfiles (9 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed ISC. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,116 tokens. 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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