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.
npx skills add oaustegard/claude-skills --skill searching-codebasesgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oaustegard/claude-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/searching-codebases)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/searching-codebases"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/searching-codebases/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/searching-codebases"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oaustegard/claude-skills/searching-codebases.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00133 | $0.02077 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00067 | $0.01038 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00027 | $0.00415 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00013 | $0.00208 |
Grade A, and why
searching-codebases 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 6d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 197 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Searching Codebases
Find code in any codebase by pattern or concept. One entry point, two search strategies, automatic routing.
When NOT to use this skill
Python callers and definitions only. Every other code question is cheaper elsewhere, and the measurement below is why this skill is edge-case-only.
| Situation | Use |
|---|---|
| What symbols does this file contain? | tree-sitting |
| Where is X defined, so I can read it? | tree-sitting |
| Any structure question, any language | tree-sitting |
| A literal string or regex | plain ripgrep |
| Which files are most about a concept? | bm25 |
| First look at an unfamiliar repo | exploring-codebases |
Non-Python code has no pyright binding resolution to offer, so there is no version of this skill that applies to it.
Prerequisites
uv tool install ripgrep
tree-sitting installs automatically when needed — for --expand context
expansion and for the binding-resolved --refs/--def/--hover tier, which
uses it to resolve symbol positions. Only the bare tree-sitter package is
fetched; the language grammars ship bundled.
Primary Command
SKILL_DIR=/mnt/skills/user/searching-codebases
python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/search.py SOURCE "query1" ["query2" ...] [OPTIONS]
SOURCE is any of:
- Local directory path
- GitHub URL (downloads tarball automatically)
uploads(uses/mnt/user-data/uploads/)project(uses/mnt/project/)- Path to a
.zipor.tar.gzarchive
Search Modes
Regex mode (patterns, identifiers, literal text):
python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/search.py ./repo "def handle_error"
python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/search.py ./repo "class.*Exception" --regex
python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/search.py ./repo "TODO|FIXME|HACK"
Semantic mode (concepts, natural language):
python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/search.py ./repo "retry logic with backoff" --semantic
python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/search.py ./repo "authentication flow"
python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/search.py ./repo "error handling strategy"
What ships with it
14 files 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.
- CHANGELOG.md 3.6 KB
- README.md 1.9 KB
- scripts/code_rag.py 20 KB runs code
- scripts/context.py 6.3 KB runs code
- scripts/lsp_refs.py 18 KB runs code
- scripts/ngram_index.py 21 KB runs code
- scripts/resolve.py 4.5 KB runs code
- scripts/search.py 13 KB runs code
- scripts/sparse_ngrams.py 6.1 KB runs code
- tests/fixture/pkg/__init__.py 0 B runs code
- tests/fixture/pkg/models.py 188 B runs code
- tests/fixture/pkg/other.py 62 B runs code
- tests/fixture/pkg/service.py 125 B runs code
- tests/test_lsp_refs.py 5.5 KB runs code
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.
- 6d ago First seen · 197 lines · 133 tokens per session scan A 3658c49c7833
searching-codebases is a skill published in the GitHub repository oaustegard/claude-skills (147 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 133 tokens to every session and 2,077 once invoked, about $0.0007 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 2026-09-03.
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