search-first

search-first is a skill for Codex from sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library. It costs 52 tokens per session (2,417 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research workflow that looks for existing libraries, tools, skills, code patterns, and academic work before custom code is written.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before adding functionality, dependencies, integrations, utilities, or research-heavy workflows.
Why use it?
It helps avoid rebuilding something that already exists and supports a more informed choice between adopting, extending, combining, or building.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions subagents; $skill-name invocation.

Good fit Use it before adding functionality, dependencies, integrations, utilities, or research-heavy workflows.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library/search-first
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 sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library --skill search-first
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library

Made for: 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 search-first

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library/search-first/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library/search-first)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library/search-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library/search-first/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 search-first

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library/search-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library/search-first.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,417 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Excessive Agency · line 229
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00052 $0.02417
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.01208
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00483
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00242

Measured 4d ago against content hash fd455281a018, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

search-first 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 4d 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/search-first/SKILL.md · 240 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 240 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/search-first — Research Before You Code

Systematizes the "search for existing solutions before implementing" workflow.

Trigger

Use this skill when:

  • Starting a new feature that likely has existing solutions
  • Adding a dependency or integration
  • The user asks "add X functionality" and you're about to write code
  • Before creating a new utility, helper, or abstraction

Workflow

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  0. NEED + LOCAL REUSE GATE                 │
│     Inspect approved local implementations  │
│     and results before external searching    │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  1. RESEARCH DECISION                       │
│     Decide whether reuse, targeted lookup,   │
│     or broader research is actually needed   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  2. TARGETED SEARCH (only when warranted)   │
│     ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐  │
│     │ Registry │ │  Tools / │ │  GitHub / │  │
│     │  / docs  │ │  skills  │ │  evidence │  │
│     └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘  │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  3. EVALUATE                                │
│     Score candidates (functionality, maint, │
│     community, docs, license, deps)         │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  4. DECIDE                                  │
│     ┌─────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌─────────┐  │
│     │  Adopt  │  │  Extend  │  │  Build   │  │
│     │ as-is   │  │  /Wrap   │  │  Custom  │  │
│     └─────────┘  └──────────┘  └─────────┘  │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  5. IMPLEMENT                               │
│     Reuse approved solution or write the    │
│     smallest justified custom code           │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Decision Matrix

Signal Action
Approved local implementation or result Reuse or repair — no broad fresh search required
Specific local gap or uncertainty Targeted lookup — search only for that issue
New dependency, new mechanism, or uncertain external fact Research — compare evidence before deciding
Exact match, well-maintained, MIT/Apache Adopt — use directly when available or within authorized implementation scope
Partial match, good foundation Extend — add a thin wrapper within authorized implementation scope
Multiple weak matches Compose — combine 2-3 small packages
Nothing suitable found Build — write custom, but informed by research

Read the full file on GitHub · 240 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 4d ago Changed · +44 lines · -3 tokens per session fd455281a018
  2. 11d ago First seen · 196 lines · 55 tokens per session scan A dcc35831f11b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

search-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository sidiangongyuan/codex-skills-library (8 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 2,417 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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