using-exploration-cycle

using-exploration-cycle is a skill for Claude Code from richfrem/agent-plugins-skills. It costs 23 tokens per session (522 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow guide that checks the state of an ongoing business-exploration session before responding or starting work. It routes the conversation to the appropriate phase when discovery is still in progress.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to continue an active exploration session, identify its current phase, and start a new exploration workflow when the project has not begun one.
Why use it?
It prevents later work from skipping required exploration steps or ignoring information already gathered. It keeps the discovery process consistent across conversations.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Part of the exploration-cycle-plugin plugin — 20 skills, 15 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/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/using-exploration-cycle
Any agent
npx skills add richfrem/agent-plugins-skills --skill using-exploration-cycle
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install exploration-cycle-plugin, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 20 skills, 15 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 using-exploration-cycle

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/using-exploration-cycle.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/using-exploration-cycle)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/using-exploration-cycle"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/richfrem/agent-plugins-skills/using-exploration-cycle.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 23 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 522 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 5.1 $0.00023 $0.00522
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00261
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00104
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00052

Measured 2d ago against content hash e5b3aec18031, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

using-exploration-cycle 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.

plugins/exploration-cycle-plugin/skills/using-exploration-cycle/SKILL.md · 41 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 41 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Before responding to ANY user message (including answering general questions or scoping requests), you MUST verify the state of the active exploration session. If a session is in progress, you DO NOT have a choice: you MUST route execution through the active phase of the exploration-workflow.

How to Check Session State

Before generating any response:

  1. Check if exploration/exploration-dashboard.md exists.
  2. If it DOES exist:
    • Read the dashboard using the Read tool.
    • Check the **Status:** field.
    • If status is Complete, the prior session has ended. You may answer normally or offer to start a new exploration.
    • If status is In Progress or TBD, identify the **Current Phase:**.
    • Immediately yield control to the active phase of the exploration workflow. Always invoke the exploration-workflow skill. Never directly invoke child skills unless authorized by the orchestrator. Do NOT answer the user's question directly in freeform prose.
  3. If it DOES NOT exist:
    • If the user's message matches any exploration triggers (e.g. "I want to build...", "Let's explore...", "I have an idea...", "start discovery"), you must bootstrap the session.
    • Invoke the exploration-workflow skill to initiate Phase 0 intake.

State Authority

The SQLite state database and programmatic phase artifacts are the absolute state authority. The markdown dashboard is a read-only projection of the database. Do not rely on conversational chat history to assume a phase is complete or that a gate has been passed.

Active Verification & Review during Waits

When executing the workflow or waiting for sub-agent execution / task completions:

  • Proactively read and review the artifacts produced in earlier phases (such as the discovery plans, visual layouts, and prototype READMEs) to ensure consistency.
  • Validate that the current phase's work aligns with the requirements and constraints established in earlier phases.
  • Do not remain idle; use any wait time to verify file existences, scan for unresolved placeholders, and check that status mappings are accurate.

Read the full file on GitHub · 41 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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.

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 · 41 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A e5b3aec18031

Subscribe to this mod's changes

using-exploration-cycle is a skill published in the GitHub repository richfrem/agent-plugins-skills (6 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 522 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.