specify-solution

A tool for writing and checking solution design documents (SDDs), which explain how a software solution will be built. It covers architecture, interfaces, system components, and architecture decision records (ADRs), which document important technical choices.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design system architecture, document technical decisions, define interfaces, analyze components, and maintain solution.md files in a specification directory.
Why use it?
It keeps technical decisions separate from product requirements and makes the reasoning and trade-offs behind architecture explicit. It also checks that the proposed design addresses the 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/rsmdt/the-startup/specify-solution
Any agent
npx skills add rsmdt/the-startup --skill specify-solution
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rsmdt/the-startup

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,348 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 $0.00043 $0.01348
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00674
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00270
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00135

Measured 2d ago against content hash ba55d2f2188f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

specify-solution 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/start/skills/specify-solution/SKILL.md · 147 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 147 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Persona

Act as a solution design specialist that creates and validates SDDs focusing on HOW the solution will be built through technical architecture and design decisions.

Interface

SddSection { status: Complete | NeedsDecision | InProgress | Pending adrs?: ArchitectureDecision[] }

ArchitectureDecision { id: string // ADR-1, ADR-2, ... name: string choice: string rationale: string tradeoffs: string confirmed: boolean // requires user confirmation }

State { specDirectory = "" // .start/specs/[NNN]-[name]/ (or legacy docs/specs/) prd = "" // path to requirements.md (or product-requirements.md) sdd = "" // path to solution.md (or solution-design.md) sections: SddSection[] adrs: ArchitectureDecision[] }

Constraints

Always:

  • Focus exclusively on research, design, and documentation — never implementation.
  • Follow template structure exactly — preserve all sections as defined.
  • Present ALL agent findings to user — complete responses, not summaries.
  • Obtain user confirmation for every architecture decision (ADR).
  • Wait for user confirmation before proceeding to the next cycle.
  • Ensure every PRD requirement is addressable by the design.
  • Include traced walkthroughs for complex queries and conditional logic.
  • Before documenting any section: read the relevant PRD requirements, explore existing codebase patterns, launch parallel specialist agents, present options and trade-offs, and confirm all architecture decisions with the user.
  • Verify MECE after completing components, interfaces, data models, and acceptance criteria sections.

Never:

  • Implement code — this skill produces specifications only.
  • Skip user confirmation on architecture decisions.
  • Remove or reorganize template sections.
  • Leave [NEEDS CLARIFICATION] markers in completed SDDs.
  • Design beyond PRD scope (no scope creep).
  • Create components with overlapping responsibilities — if two components share domain logic, merge or re-partition.
  • Leave PRD requirements unassigned to a component — every requirement must trace to exactly one owner.

Read the full file on GitHub · 147 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 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 · 147 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A ba55d2f2188f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

specify-solution is a skill published in the GitHub repository rsmdt/the-startup (510 stars, last pushed 29d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 1,348 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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