feature-init

A setup step that creates a feature folder and its initial records for a development workflow. It can start a new feature, promote an idea, onboard existing work, or connect a roadmap item.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to begin a feature, turn an approved idea into tracked work, bring existing code into the workflow, or promote a roadmap item.
Why use it?
Starting feature work without a consistent folder, branch, and tracker entry makes progress harder to find and manage. This establishes the required starting structure.

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/swingerman/engineer/feature-init
Any agent
npx skills add swingerman/engineer --skill feature-init
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/swingerman/engineer

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,247 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 $0.00052 $0.02247
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.01123
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00449
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00225

Measured 2d ago against content hash 5cc353e8561d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

feature-init 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.

engineer/skills/feature-init/SKILL.md · 56 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 56 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

feature-init

Create a feature folder for the DAE pipeline — feature.md (the Ready contract), the folder, a branch, and a tracker entry. Checkpoint 1.5.

When to use

Five paths:

  • From discuss — receives a feature_intake payload in context (park or promote outcome). No interview.
  • Standalone — no payload; run the intake interview.
  • From a tracker capture — promoting an untriaged row a human added directly to the tracker (no Slug; see Tracker-as-intake in references/tracker.md). Pre-fill intake from the row (its title → title/outcome, Type, any notes); confirm the rest. Reuse the row — don't create a new one (Step 9).
  • From a roadmap item — promoting a strategic roadmap item (status planned) into a feature (typically from next's ON THE ROADMAP bucket, or discuss). Pre-fill intake from the item (title, area, notes). Signalled by a roadmap_ref (the item id) passed in — carry it onto feature.md and mark the item in-progress (Step 9). See the roadmap ↔ feature funnel in references/roadmap.md.
  • Onboarding intake — invoked by onboard (or directly) to formalize work that already exists in the codebase. The feature folder is reverse-engineered from an existing spec / branch / implementation. Enters at status: in-progress or done, not ready.

Detect from-discuss vs standalone by whether a feature_intake payload is present; a tracker capture is signalled by a slug-less tracker_ref passed in (typically from next); a roadmap promotion is signalled by a roadmap_ref (item id) passed in; onboarding intake is signalled by onboard (or an explicit "formalize existing feature" request).

Not for: brand-new ideas worth exploring first (discuss), or editing an existing feature (feature-edit).

Workflow

Before the steps below, create one TodoWrite todo per workflow step (the full list up front, as a roadmap). After Step 6 creates the feature folder, show the pipeline breadcrumb: run ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_progress.py <feature-dir> and present its output — for a just-initialized feature (no progress.md yet) it renders the pipeline ahead. The breadcrumb is advisory and never blocks. See ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/progress-indicator.md.

Read the full file on GitHub · 56 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 · 56 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 5cc353e8561d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

feature-init is a skill published in the GitHub repository swingerman/engineer (144 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 2,247 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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