prime-context

A preparation step that loads the background information for a feature before pipeline work begins. A feature is a planned unit of product work, and this step restores its files, rules, and artifact conventions to working memory.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when beginning work on a Ready feature that the agent has not handled during the current session.
Why use it?
Starting unfamiliar work without its context can lead to rediscovery, misplaced files, or inconsistent specifications. This gets the agent oriented before the next workflow checkpoint.

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

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 48 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 840 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 $0.00048 $0.00840
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00420
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00168
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00084

Measured 2d ago against content hash 6ea19461d581, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prime-context 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/prime-context/SKILL.md · 36 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 36 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

prime-context

Load working memory before pipeline work on a Ready feature — the convergent counterpart to discuss. Forked from superpowers:brainstorming but inverted: no exploration, just loading and orienting. Produces no artifact.

When to use

A prep step (not a checkpoint) between feature-init and discover-acs, on any feature the agent hasn't already worked this session.

Skip when: the agent just created the feature this session (context already warm). Not for: exploring whether a feature is worth doing (discuss).

Workflow

  1. Resolve + locate — resolve the methodology root + manifest via ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_resolve.py (see references/resolving.md); locate the feature (slug arg or branch name). Reject if no folder / no feature.md. Layout disambiguation: if the project has BOTH a features/NNN-*/ and a specs/NNN-*/ tree (a speckit migration in progress), state which holds this feature's artifacts; and if more than one acceptance-IR convention is present (features/NNN/.build/spec.json vs an acceptance-pipeline/ir/ per-GWT layout), name the one this feature uses — so the load doesn't rediscover the split ad-hoc. (speckit-consolidate unifies it.)
  2. Silent batch load — without narrating: feature.md, CHARTER.md, manifest.yml, prior handoffs/ (especially the originating *-discuss.md), and the files named in feature.md's "Related code / design pointers". When loading those code pointers, prefer LSP — documentSymbol for file shape, hover for signatures/types, workspaceSymbol to pull in the symbols they reference — over reading whole files blind, when an LSP MCP capability is available; fall back to grep + Read otherwise. See ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/code-lookup.md.
  3. Orient — give a concise summary: outcome, scope, autonomy level (+ charter cap), key prior decisions, related code, relevant ADRs.
  4. One prompt — ask exactly one question: anything else to load? If the user names a new code pointer, load it and offer to add it to feature.md. Then stop — prime-context orients, it does not interview.
  5. Breadcrumb handoff — emit a tiny handoff recording what was loaded.

Read the full file on GitHub · 36 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 · 36 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A 6ea19461d581

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prime-context is a skill published in the GitHub repository swingerman/engineer (144 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 840 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 2026-08-30.

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