execute-spec

execute-spec is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from nicknisi/ideation. It costs 71 tokens per session (4,729 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow that carries out an implementation specification in a software repository. It explores the codebase, builds the requested parts, checks the result, and runs review-and-fix cycles before committing.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when you have an implementation spec and want the workflow to prepare context, build components, review the Git changes, fix findings, and commit the result.
Why use it?
It gives a specification a repeatable path from written requirements to reviewed code.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Installs and runs on its own, but its text points at files inside its plugin — anything it tells you to read at a ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} path is only there once the plugin is installed. Installing the plugin gets both.

Part of the ideation plugin — 7 skills, 3 agents 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/nicknisi/ideation/execute-spec
Any agent
npx skills add nicknisi/ideation --skill execute-spec
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicknisi/ideation

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install ideation, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 3 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 execute-spec

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicknisi/ideation/execute-spec.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicknisi/ideation/execute-spec)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicknisi/ideation/execute-spec"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicknisi/ideation/execute-spec.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,729 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 $0.00071 $0.04729
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.02364
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00946
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00473

Measured 3d ago against content hash b4be86e9ad12, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

execute-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 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.

skills/execute-spec/SKILL.md · 256 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 256 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Execute Ideation Specification

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Execute a spec file generated by the ideation skill.

Flags:

  • --parallel — dispatch subagents for independent components.
  • --headless — auto-proceed through every confirmation (no AskUserQuestion). Used by /ideation:autopilot.
  • --strict — modifies --headless to fail closed where plain headless fails open. Set by autopilot for express-approved contracts (approvalMode: "express" in contract-data.json), whose artifacts no human reviewed — the fail-open defaults are calibrated for reviewed artifacts.
  • Remaining argument: spec file path (optional).

Example: /ideation:execute-spec --parallel or /ideation:execute-spec --headless docs/ideation/foo/spec-phase-1.md

Headless/strict gate semantics — owned by workflows/README.md's gate-behavior table; when prose and engine disagree, the tests are right. Do not restate the matrix here — the original defect (strict specified to fail closed, actually improvising) shipped exactly because divergent prose copies drifted from the engine.

Pre-Execution

1. Load Specification

Resolve the spec in this order:

  1. Argument given — read it directly.
  2. No argument — auto-detect from TaskList: a task with status: pending, empty blockedBy, and a subject starting with "Phase" or metadata containing specFile. Read its specFile (via TaskGet).
  3. No tasks — glob ./docs/ideation/*/spec-phase-*.md and ./docs/ideation/*/spec.md (single-spec projects emit a bare spec.md). Multiple matches → AskUserQuestion to pick (headless: first unblocked).

2. Scout Codebase

Under the autopilot Workflow engine, this step is superseded: the engine runs the scout as a sibling workflow stage and hands its map to the build stage under an explicit ENGINE OVERRIDES block (skip scout, stop after Verify, never commit, git add -N every new file) — see ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/workflows/README.md. This section governs direct runs.

Read the full file on GitHub · 256 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 · 256 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A b4be86e9ad12

Subscribe to this mod's changes

execute-spec is a skill published in the GitHub repository nicknisi/ideation (12 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 4,729 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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