tplot-data-lifecycle

A guide for managing PySPEDAS and PyTplot data, tools used to load, inspect, calculate with, plot, export, and remove scientific time-series data. It treats shared plotting variables as tracked analysis artifacts.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when working with tplot variables, spacecraft data, plots, exports, or PySPEDAS routines such as loading, storing, inspecting, and deleting data.
Why use it?
It helps avoid confusing variable names, hidden state, raw data dumps, and accidental loss or mixing of data during analysis.

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/spedas/spedas_agent_kit/tplot-data-lifecycle
Any agent
npx skills add spedas/spedas_agent_kit --skill tplot-data-lifecycle
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/spedas/spedas_agent_kit

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 879 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 $0.00879
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00439
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00176
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00088

Measured 2d ago against content hash b00a04529e53, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tplot-data-lifecycle 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/plugins/spedas-codex/skills/tplot-data-lifecycle/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.

tplot data lifecycle

Use this skill when a workflow mentions tplot variables, PyTplot, IDL SPEDAS STORE_DATA / GET_DATA, PySPEDAS store_data / get_data, plotting, export, or variable cleanup. The goal is to keep global-ish tplot state understandable and reproducible inside an Agent Kit run.

MCP/default-surface boundary

When documenting tplot runtime routes, use the structured marker external_runtime_route.not_an_mcp_tool: true. tplot_names, store_data, get_data, del_data, tplot, tplotxy, cdf_to_tplot, tplot_save, and related routines are PySPEDAS/PyTplot runtime routines, not default Agent Kit MCP tools. Treat them as not_an_mcp_tool unless a current Agent Kit tool explicitly exposes the action. MCP clients should ask Agent Kit to plan/load/export/plot through existing tools and should receive compact metadata plus artifact paths.

Lifecycle model

  1. Load or create variables. Use a bounded plan and run-scoped prefix / suffix so variable names reveal mission, product, and interval.
  2. List and inspect. Record names, shapes, time span, cadence, coordinate metadata, units, support-data status, and fill values. Do not paste raw arrays.
  3. Normalize metadata. Preserve or set coordinate systems and units before rotations, LMN/MVA, spectra, or particle calculations.
  4. Derive variables. Copy/rename before destructive operations; name derived products with method and frame, e.g. mms1_fgm_gsm_lmn_batch1.
  5. Plot/export. Figures, CDF/CSV/JSON summaries, and notebook snippets are artifacts. Return paths, hashes, variable lists, and compact stats.
  6. Cleanup or checkpoint. Delete scratch variables only after exported artifacts and provenance/run.json capture what was done.

Inspection checklist

For each important tplot variable, capture:

  • Variable name and source product.
  • Time range after clipping and number of samples.
  • Data shape and component labels.
  • Units and coordinate frame (GSE, GSM, SM, FAC, LMN, RTN, or unknown).
  • Whether it is original, support data, or derived.
  • Fill-value/de-spike/interpolation/smoothing status.
  • Artifact path for any plot or exported table.

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. 2d ago First seen · 60 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A b00a04529e53

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tplot-data-lifecycle is a skill published in the GitHub repository spedas/spedas_agent_kit (3 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 879 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 2026-08-31.

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