spec-research

A research workflow that investigates a technical topic before a software design is written. It examines the repository and related sources, then saves one dated research document.

In plain words
What is it for?
Researching implementation patterns, checking project rules and past decisions, finding similar code, and producing a research note for a later design.
Why use it?
Design work often misses existing code, project rules, or earlier decisions. This gathers that context first so the design can build on what is already known.

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/smana/cloud-native-ref/spec-research
Any agent
npx skills add Smana/cloud-native-ref --skill spec-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Smana/cloud-native-ref

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 65 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,080 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 $0.00065 $0.01080
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00540
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00216
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00108

Measured 3d ago against content hash 0e134566aafc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

spec-research 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 3d 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.

.claude/skills/spec-research/SKILL.md · 110 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 110 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Spec Research Skill (subagent)

Runs in an isolated Explore-agent context. Read-only across the repo + external sources; writes exactly one file: docs/superpowers/specs/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>-research.md.

Your mission

Research $ARGUMENTS to feed a Superpowers design (superpowers:brainstorming). Produce a concise, reusable research artifact the design author can build on.

Research protocol

1. Frame the question

Parse $ARGUMENTS for the topic slug (first token) and the research question (remainder). The design doc need not exist yet — write the research file so the design author can consume it.

2. Map the local landscape first

Before going external, exhaust the repo:

  • Existing compositions in the sibling Smana/crossplane-configuration repo, under apis/<api>/kcl/ — grep for analogous patterns (e.g., if researching cache, look at app/, sqlinstance/).
  • Constitution (docs/platform-constitution.md) — which rules apply to this topic?
  • ADRs (docs/decisions/) — any prior decision constrains this?
  • Prior designs (docs/superpowers/specs/) and archived specs (docs/specs/done/) — reuse patterns rather than reinvent.
  • Runtime examples: infrastructure/aws-0/, security/aws-0/, etc.

3. External sources (in priority order)

  1. Context7 via mcp__context7__resolve-library-id then mcp__context7__query-docs — up-to-date docs for any named library or operator.
  2. Official operator/vendor docs via WebFetch.
  3. Superpowers skills (the installed plugin's skills/ directory) when the research is meta — about the workflow, not the tech.
  4. WebSearch only if the above three yielded nothing — lowest signal, easiest to misquote.

4. Write research.md

Emit exactly this structure at docs/superpowers/specs/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>-research.md:

# Research: <one-line question>

**Topic**: <slug>
**Conducted**: <YYYY-MM-DD>
**Researcher**: Claude (spec-research subagent)

---

## TL;DR

<3–5 bullet points: the decisions the researcher would recommend and why>

## Standard stack

<Operators, libraries, images we should use. Pin to specific versions when docs list an LTS.>

| Component | Pick | Version | Source |
|-----------|------|---------|--------|

## Local patterns worth reusing

<File paths + 1-line note on what each shows. Copy existing patterns over invention.>

- `<path>`: <why it matters>

## Don't hand-roll

<Things the ecosystem already solves. Saves the spec author from designing these.>

## Common pitfalls

<Sharp edges from ecosystem docs / community. Especially: KCL mutation (#285),
Cilium bug #43493 for prefix delegation, anything that broke in this repo before.>

## Open questions surfaced

<Items to raise as open questions during brainstorming>

- [ ] <question>
- [ ] <question>

## References

- Context7: `<library-id>` <brief excerpt>
- <Vendor doc URL>
- Local files: `<path>`, `<path>`

Read the full file on GitHub · 110 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. 3d ago First seen · 110 lines · 65 tokens per session scan A 0e134566aafc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

spec-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository Smana/cloud-native-ref (99 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 65 tokens to every session and 1,080 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 2026-08-30.

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