add-functional-spec

A guide for adding one functional specification to a .plain file. A functional specification describes one observable behavior the software must provide.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when adding one new behavior to a plain specification, including during feature or specification-authoring work.
Why use it?
It helps add a requirement in the correct format and check that it is small enough and does not contradict existing requirements.

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/plainlang/plain-forge/add-functional-spec
Any agent
npx skills add plainlang/plain-forge --skill add-functional-spec
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/plainlang/plain-forge

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 111 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,284 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 $0.00111 $0.01284
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.00642
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00257
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00128

Measured 2d ago against content hash c4715c7873ea, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

add-functional-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 2d 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.

forge/skills/add-functional-spec/SKILL.md · 86 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 86 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Add Functional Spec

Always use the skill load-plain-reference to retrieve the ***plain syntax rules — but only if you haven't done so yet.

Workflow

  1. Identify the target .plain file. If ambiguous, ask the user.
  2. Read the entire file to understand existing definitions, implementation reqs, and all current functional specs (including those in requires modules).
  3. Draft the functional spec following the rules below, then run the review pass in concise-specs.md over the draft — trim it to the shortest wording that keeps every fact before any other check.
  4. Analyze complexity — use the analyze-if-func-spec-too-complex skill to verify the drafted spec implies ≤ 200 LOC. If too complex, use the break-down-func-spec skill to split it, then repeat from step 3 for each resulting spec.
  5. Check for conflicts with every existing functional spec — this is critical. Run analyze-func-specs once with the new spec plus all existing specs (in the file and in any requires chain) as a single batch. The batched analyzer returns every conflicting pair in one call — do not invoke a pair-by-pair analyzer. For each conflicting pair it reports, run resolve-spec-conflict on that pair; re-run analyze-func-specs over the touched set after each resolution until the verdict is COMPATIBLE.
  6. Append the spec to the end of the ***functional specs*** section (specs are chronological; new ones go last).
  7. Read the file again to confirm correct placement and syntax.

Rules

Complexity Limit

Each functional spec must imply a maximum of 200 changed lines of code. If the requirement is too large, use the break-down-func-spec skill to split it into multiple smaller, independent specs. Do not include LOC estimates in the spec text.

Chronological Ordering

Specs are rendered incrementally, top to bottom. The renderer has no knowledge of future specs — only previously rendered specs are in context. This means:

  • A new spec can reference behavior defined by earlier specs.
  • A new spec cannot assume anything about specs that come after it.
  • Place the new spec at the correct position if it must come before a future spec; otherwise append at the end.

Read the full file on GitHub · 86 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. 2d ago First seen · 86 lines · 111 tokens per session scan A c4715c7873ea

Subscribe to this mod's changes

add-functional-spec is a skill published in the GitHub repository plainlang/plain-forge (55 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 111 tokens to every session and 1,284 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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