technical-spec-writing

technical-spec-writing is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from The-AI-Directory-Company/agents-and-skills. It costs 38 tokens per session (1,182 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for writing a technical specification: a document that explains what will change in a software system and how engineers should build it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to document new features, refactors, migrations, or extensions before engineering work begins.
Why use it?
It connects product needs with implementation details, so reviewers can understand the problem, proposed design, data and API changes, migrations, rollback plans, and unanswered questions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to document new features, refactors, migrations, or extensions before engineering work begins.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/the-ai-directory-company/agents-and-skills/technical-spec-writing
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 The-AI-Directory-Company/agents-and-skills --skill technical-spec-writing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/The-AI-Directory-Company/agents-and-skills

Made for: Claude Code, 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 technical-spec-writing

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-ai-directory-company/agents-and-skills/technical-spec-writing/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-ai-directory-company/agents-and-skills/technical-spec-writing)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-ai-directory-company/agents-and-skills/technical-spec-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-ai-directory-company/agents-and-skills/technical-spec-writing/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 technical-spec-writing

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/the-ai-directory-company/agents-and-skills/technical-spec-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/the-ai-directory-company/agents-and-skills/technical-spec-writing.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,182 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.
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 $0.00038 $0.01182
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00591
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00236
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00118

Measured 9d ago against content hash f027689bd082, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

technical-spec-writing 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 9d 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/technical-spec-writing/SKILL.md · 101 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 101 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Technical Spec Writing

Before you start

Gather the following from the user. If anything is missing, ask before writing:

  1. What are you building? — Feature name and one-sentence summary. Link to the PRD if one exists.
  2. Why now? — Business driver, user pain, or technical urgency behind this work.
  3. Scope — New feature, refactor, migration, or extension of an existing system?
  4. Constraints — Tech stack, timeline, team size, backward-compatibility requirements.
  5. Audience — Who reviews this spec? (e.g., engineering team, staff engineer, CTO, security)

If the user says "write a spec for X" with no context, push back: "What problem does this solve, and what does the system look like today?"

Technical spec template

Title

[Feature/Change Name] — Technical Specification

1. Problem Statement (3-5 sentences)

State the problem from the user's or system's perspective. Reference the PRD or incident that motivates the work. Describe the current state and why it is insufficient.

2. Context

Summarize relevant prior art: existing systems, past decisions, constraints inherited from other teams. A reviewer who has no background should understand the landscape after reading this section.

3. Proposed Solution

Describe the approach at a level of detail sufficient for another engineer to implement it. Include component interactions, sequence of operations, and key design decisions. Call out alternatives you considered and why you rejected them.

4. Data Model Changes

Document every schema change: new tables, columns, indexes, or type modifications. Use DDL or a clear table format. State whether changes are additive (safe to deploy independently) or breaking.

5. API Changes

For each new or modified endpoint: method, path, request/response shapes, error codes, and auth requirements. If no API changes, state "No API changes" explicitly so reviewers know it was considered.

6. Migration Plan

Step-by-step plan for moving from current state to target state. Include: ordering of deploys, data backfill strategy, estimated duration, and whether the migration requires downtime.

Read the full file on GitHub · 101 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 9d ago First seen · 101 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A f027689bd082

Subscribe to this mod's changes

technical-spec-writing is a skill published in the GitHub repository The-AI-Directory-Company/agents-and-skills (2 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 1,182 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 2026-09-03.

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