senior-developer-research-first-protocol

senior-developer-research-first-protocol is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from sampleXbro/agentsmesh. It costs 21 tokens per session (761 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research checklist for coding-agent work that requires the agent to investigate the project before making changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before feature work, bug fixes, dependency or configuration changes, migrations, security work, and unfamiliar project discovery.
Why use it?
It reduces broken integrations, unintended side effects, and fixes aimed at symptoms instead of root causes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

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/samplexbro/agentsmesh/senior-developer-research-first-protocol
Any agent
npx skills add sampleXbro/agentsmesh --skill senior-developer-research-first-protocol
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sampleXbro/agentsmesh

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 senior-developer-research-first-protocol

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/samplexbro/agentsmesh/senior-developer-research-first-protocol.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/samplexbro/agentsmesh/senior-developer-research-first-protocol)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/samplexbro/agentsmesh/senior-developer-research-first-protocol"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/samplexbro/agentsmesh/senior-developer-research-first-protocol.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 761 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 $0.00021 $0.00761
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00380
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00152
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00076

Measured 2d ago against content hash cd3c9dfed5cb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

senior-developer-research-first-protocol 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.

.agents/skills/senior-developer-research-first-protocol/SKILL.md · 63 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 63 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

Research-First Protocol

Why: Understanding prevents broken integrations, unintended side effects, wasted time fixing symptoms instead of root causes.

When to Apply

Complex work (use full protocol): Implementing features, fixing bugs (beyond syntax), dependency conflicts, debugging integrations, configuration changes, architectural modifications, data migrations, security implementations, cross-system integrations, new API endpoints.

Simple operations (execute directly): Git operations on known repos, reading files with known exact paths, running known commands, port management on known ports, installing known dependencies, single known config updates.

MUST use research protocol for: Finding files in unknown directories, searching without exact location, discovering what exists, any operation where "not found" is possible, exploring unfamiliar environments.

The 8-Step Protocol

<research_protocol>

Phase 1: Discovery

  1. Find and read relevant notes/docs - Search across workspace (notes/, docs/, README), ~/Documents/Documentation/, ~/Documents/Notes/, and project .md files. Use as context only; verify against actual code.

  2. Read additional documentation - API docs, Confluence, Jira, wikis, official docs, in-code comments. Use for initial context; verify against actual code.

  3. Map complete system end-to-end

    • Data Flow & Architecture: Request lifecycle, dependencies, integration points, architectural decisions, affected components
    • Data Structures & Schemas: Database schemas, API structures, validation rules, transformation patterns
    • Configuration & Dependencies: Environment variables, service dependencies, auth patterns, deployment configs
    • Existing Implementation: Search for similar/relevant features that already exist - can we leverage or expand them instead of creating new?
  4. Inspect and familiarize - Study existing implementations before building new. Look for code that solves similar problems - expanding existing code is often better than creating from scratch. If leveraging existing code, trace all its dependencies first to ensure changes won't break other things.

Read the full file on GitHub · 63 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 · 63 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A cd3c9dfed5cb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

senior-developer-research-first-protocol is a skill published in the GitHub repository sampleXbro/agentsmesh (24 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 761 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

data-charts-tako

Search and visualize the world's data - get charts, insights, and embeddable knowledge cards for finance, economics, demographics, sports, and more.

gooseworks-ai/goose-skills · 35 tokens

monorepo-management

Master monorepo management with Turborepo, Nx, and pnpm workspaces to build efficient, scalable multi-package repositories with optimized builds and dependency management. Use when setting up monorepos, optimizing builds, or managing shared dependencies.

wshobson/agents · 54 tokens

browse-and-evaluate

Use when exploring the ai-agent-skills catalog to find, compare, and evaluate skills before installing. Always use --fields to limit output size and --dry-run before committing to an install.

MoizIbnYousaf/Ai-Agent-Skills · 43 tokens

render-3d-product-showcase

Assemble a premium 3D product-showcase ad from a config — four beat clips (an orbiting hero rotation, a macro push-in, a physics reveal, a typographic close) normalized to the brand-color canvas, hard-concatenated in order, closed on a deterministic Playwright brand end card, and mixed under one instrumental bed at…

gooseworks-ai/goose-skills · 159 tokens

render-airdrop-carousel

Assemble a viral iOS "AirDrop" notification-carousel video ad (≈6–8s, 9:16) from a brand line plus 6–16 real product photos — a native AirDrop share-sheet card ("Brand would like to share a · Decline / Accept") springs up and its preview window CYCLES through the products, landing on a range/lineup payoff with an…

gooseworks-ai/goose-skills · 207 tokens

telnyx-voice-advanced-curl

Advanced call control features including DTMF sending, SIPREC recording, noise suppression, client state, and supervisor controls. This skill provides REST API (curl) examples.

team-telnyx/ai · 44 tokens