previous-work

previous-work is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from scott-fryxell/brayness. It costs 96 tokens per session (654 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A search tool for finding information in earlier coding-agent sessions across pi, Cursor, and Claude Code. It can look for previous discussions, attempts, fixes, or completed work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to answer questions such as what was done before, whether an approach was tried, or where an earlier session discussed a topic.
Why use it?
It avoids repeating investigations when the same task or problem may already have been handled.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit Use it to answer questions such as what was done before, whether an approach was tried, or where an earlier session discussed a topic.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/scott-fryxell/brayness/previous-work
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 scott-fryxell/brayness --skill previous-work
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/scott-fryxell/brayness

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 previous-work

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/scott-fryxell/brayness/previous-work/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/scott-fryxell/brayness/previous-work)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/scott-fryxell/brayness/previous-work"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/scott-fryxell/brayness/previous-work/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for previous-work

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/scott-fryxell/brayness/previous-work"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/scott-fryxell/brayness/previous-work.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 96 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 654 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00096 $0.00654
Opus 5 $0.00048 $0.00327
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00131
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00065

Measured 10d ago against content hash 3a3d7c786395, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

previous-work 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 10d 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.

skills/previous-work/SKILL.md · 60 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 60 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Previous Work

Raw transcript archaeology across pi, Cursor, and Claude Code. For distilled lessons, AGENTS.local.md Learnings is already in context (memory skill) - check it first; only dig transcripts when you need what actually happened.

Where sessions live

Agent Path Shape
pi .pi/agent/sessions/*.jsonl timestamp + uuid filenames
Cursor ~/.cursor/projects/Users-scott-Desktop-brayness/agent-transcripts/<uuid>/<uuid>.jsonl one dir per chat
Claude Code ~/.claude/projects/-Users-scott-Desktop-brayness*/*.jsonl one store per cwd

Notes:

  • Claude fragments by working directory: work/realness sessions live in -Users-scott-Desktop-brayness-work-realness, etc. Older stores named -Users-scott-Desktop-brain* (previous harness names) hold early work.
  • Cursor keeps one store per opened folder under ~/.cursor/projects/; project windows like work/realness have their own.

pi sessions are hidden from rg by the repo .ignore (sessions/ pattern) - always pass --no-ignore:

rg --no-ignore -li 'search term' .pi/agent/sessions/
rg -li 'search term' ~/.cursor/projects/Users-scott-Desktop-brayness/agent-transcripts/
rg -li 'search term' ~/.claude/projects/-Users-scott-Desktop-brayness*/

Then narrow inside a hit (JSONL, one message per line):

rg --no-ignore -i 'term' <file> | head -5     # locate lines
ls -t <dir> | head                             # most recent first

Filenames carry the date (pi) or check file mtime (Cursor/Claude) to order by recency when the user says "yesterday" or "last week".

Ground rules

  • Transcripts contain secrets and personal info. Quote the minimum that answers the question, and leave it in the transcript otherwise.
  • Cite where the answer came from (which store, which file, the date) so the user can reopen the session.
  • Not found is a real answer: say which stores you searched and with what terms instead of guessing.
  • Durable lessons discovered while digging go to AGENTS.local.md Learnings (memory skill) so the next search is unnecessary.

Read the full file on GitHub · 60 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. 10d ago First seen · 60 lines · 96 tokens per session scan A 3a3d7c786395

Subscribe to this mod's changes

previous-work is a skill published in the GitHub repository scott-fryxell/brayness (120 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 96 tokens to every session and 654 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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