What is ase-spec-activate?

A specification workspace activator that loads a project's SpecBook rules, schema, and specification files into context. A specification is a structured description of what a system should do and the rules it must follow.

Use it when you want to query or explain specifications, or make an ad-hoc change to a specification artifact. It does not create saved task plans or edit non-specification artifacts.

It lets the assistant read, search, explain, and make explicitly requested changes to specification files without creating a separate task plan. It keeps code, infrastructure, and unrelated document types out of scope.

ase-spec-activate — Skill for Claude Code by rse

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 rse/ase --skill ase-spec-activate

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rse/ase

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install ase, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 53 skills, 10 agents, 5 hooks.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rse/ase/ase-spec-activate/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/rse/ase/ase-spec-activate)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rse/ase/ase-spec-activate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rse/ase/ase-spec-activate/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rse/ase/ase-spec-activate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rse/ase/ase-spec-activate.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 157 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,276 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.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00157	$0.02276
Opus 5	$0.00078	$0.01138
Sonnet 5	$0.00031	$0.00455
Haiku 4.5	$0.00016	$0.00228

Measured today against content hash 7621fbe4c5a7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ase-spec-activate 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 today.

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.

plugin/skills/ase-spec-activate/SKILL.md · 206 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 206 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

@${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../meta/ase-control.md @${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../meta/ase-skill.md @${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../meta/ase-getopt.md

@${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../meta/ase-format-meta.md @${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../meta/ase-format-spec.md @${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../meta/ase-tenets.md

Procedure

This skill is plan-less and read-mostly: it never composes or persists a task plan and MUST NOT call ase_task_save(...). It only loads know-how into the context and answers an optional query. It modifies SPEC artifacts only when the query explicitly asks for an ad-hoc change, and it never touches the artifact kinds CODE, DOCS, TASK, INFR, and OTHR.

Initialize:

Set (with any leading and trailing whitespace stripped). Do not output anything.
Activate Format:

The SpecBook format contract is already loaded into the context through the included ase-format-spec.md (and its nested ase-format-specbook.md). Internalize it now: the object kinds, the object ids and {{<id/>}} anchors, the [[xxx]] references, the , BECAUSE rationale split, the Complex/Concise/Grouped format variants, and the Created:/Modified: frontmatter block. Do not output anything.
Activate Schema:
1. Set to the list of file paths constituting the SpecBook SCHEMA Model of the project (resolved as described in ase-format-spec.md), each annotated with standard for the bundled schema or custom for a project-specific one. Do not output anything.
Activate Artifacts:

Resolve the SPEC artifacts by calling the ase_artifact_list(kind: [ "spec" ]) tool of the ase MCP server once and reading the returned artifacts array of { kind, files } objects. Set to the project-relative file list and to its length. Do not read the artifacts themselves in this step. Do not output anything.
Report Activation:

Only output the following :

SCHEMA: (one <file/> (standard|custom) entry per line, aligned) SPEC: <ase-spec-basedir/> ( artifacts)
Answer Query:

Serve ad-hoc under the Activated Behavior below: read the SPEC artifacts of which are related to , resolve their [[xxx]] references across artifacts, and answer the query grounded in the specification content, citing the artifact file and object id of every statement you rely on. If asks for a change, apply it as an ad-hoc modification according to the Activated Behavior. Set to the resulting answer and only output the following :

Read the full file on GitHub · 206 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.

help.md 3.0 KB

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.

today Changed · +2 lines 7621fbe4c5a7
3d ago First seen · 204 lines · 157 tokens per session scan A 078be1f261ac

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ase-spec-activate is a skill published in the GitHub repository rse/ase (52 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 157 tokens to every session and 2,276 once invoked, about $0.0008 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 2026-09-08.

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