ask-questions-if-underspecified

ask-questions-if-underspecified is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from MoizIbnYousaf/Ai-Agent-Skills. It costs 24 tokens per session (846 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of ask-questions-if-underspecified, MIT.

A clarification workflow for requests that lack clear goals, scope, constraints, or acceptance criteria.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to ask the smallest set of necessary questions before building or changing software.
Why use it?
It prevents implementation from starting with assumptions that could lead to the wrong result.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to ask the smallest set of necessary questions before building or changing software.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/moizibnyousaf/ai-agent-skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified
About the project

AI Agent Skills is a curated library and package manager for installing, organizing, and creating skills for compatible AI coding agents. It is for developers who want to manage reusable agent instructions through a command-line or terminal interface. The catalogue skills and agents are examples of the kind of add-ons it helps manage.

MoizIbnYousaf/Ai-Agent-Skills · 1,134 stars · on GitHub · npmjs.com

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 MoizIbnYousaf/Ai-Agent-Skills --skill ask-questions-if-underspecified
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MoizIbnYousaf/Ai-Agent-Skills

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 ask-questions-if-underspecified

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/moizibnyousaf/ai-agent-skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/moizibnyousaf/ai-agent-skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/moizibnyousaf/ai-agent-skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/moizibnyousaf/ai-agent-skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified/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 ask-questions-if-underspecified

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/moizibnyousaf/ai-agent-skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/moizibnyousaf/ai-agent-skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 846 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
  • Socket pass 3 Apr 2026
  • Snyk pass 3 Apr 2026
How audits are shown
Origin 83% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00024 $0.00846
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00423
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00169
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00085

Measured 12d ago against content hash 2bc5e5b19cb5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-questions-if-underspecified 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 12d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

83% identical to ask-questions-if-underspecified — 20 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified/SKILL.md · 83 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 83 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask Questions If Underspecified

Goal

Ask the minimum set of clarifying questions needed to avoid wrong work; do not start implementing until the must-have questions are answered (or the user explicitly approves proceeding with stated assumptions).

Workflow

1) Decide whether the request is underspecified

Treat a request as underspecified if after exploring how to perform the work, some or all of the following are not clear:

  • Define the objective (what should change vs stay the same)
  • Define "done" (acceptance criteria, examples, edge cases)
  • Define scope (which files/components/users are in/out)
  • Define constraints (compatibility, performance, style, deps, time)
  • Identify environment (language/runtime versions, OS, build/test runner)
  • Clarify safety/reversibility (data migration, rollout/rollback, risk)

If multiple plausible interpretations exist, assume it is underspecified.

2) Ask must-have questions first (keep it small)

Ask 1-5 questions in the first pass. Prefer questions that eliminate whole branches of work.

Make questions easy to answer:

  • Optimize for scannability (short, numbered questions; avoid paragraphs)
  • Offer multiple-choice options when possible
  • Suggest reasonable defaults when appropriate (mark them clearly as the default/recommended choice; bold the recommended choice in the list, or if you present options in a code block, put a bold "Recommended" line immediately above the block and also tag defaults inside the block)
  • Include a fast-path response (e.g., reply defaults to accept all recommended/default choices)
  • Include a low-friction "not sure" option when helpful (e.g., "Not sure - use default")
  • Separate "Need to know" from "Nice to know" if that reduces friction
  • Structure options so the user can respond with compact decisions (e.g., 1b 2a 3c); restate the chosen options in plain language to confirm

3) Pause before acting

Until must-have answers arrive:

  • Do not run commands, edit files, or produce a detailed plan that depends on unknowns
  • Do perform a clearly labeled, low-risk discovery step only if it does not commit you to a direction (e.g., inspect repo structure, read relevant config files)

Read the full file on GitHub · 83 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. 12d ago First seen · 83 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A 2bc5e5b19cb5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-questions-if-underspecified is a skill published in the GitHub repository MoizIbnYousaf/Ai-Agent-Skills (1,134 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 846 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 83% identical to ask-questions-if-underspecified, differing in 20 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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