mini-spec

mini-spec is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from tmusser/ai-engineering-skills. It costs 40 tokens per session (1,053 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for writing a compact SPEC.md file before implementation. The file defines the task-specific change, boundaries, likely failure modes, and how the result will be checked.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to clarify implementation scope, record non-goals, identify risks, and set a verification target.
Why use it?
It turns a request and its authoritative references into a small, testable target without rewriting more detailed sources.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to clarify implementation scope, record non-goals, identify risks, and set a verification target.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tmusser/ai-engineering-skills/mini-spec
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 tmusser/ai-engineering-skills --skill mini-spec
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tmusser/ai-engineering-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 mini-spec

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmusser/ai-engineering-skills/mini-spec/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmusser/ai-engineering-skills/mini-spec)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmusser/ai-engineering-skills/mini-spec"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmusser/ai-engineering-skills/mini-spec/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 mini-spec

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmusser/ai-engineering-skills/mini-spec"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmusser/ai-engineering-skills/mini-spec.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,053 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 $0.00040 $0.01053
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00526
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00211
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00105

Measured 9d ago against content hash 81eb29f6eeb0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

mini-spec 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/mini-spec/SKILL.md · 112 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Mini Spec

Purpose

Create the smallest useful SPEC.md that clarifies intent, names the likely failure mode, and gives the agent a verifiable target before planning or implementation.

The spec is both a floor and a ceiling: acceptance criteria define what must happen; non-goals, constraints, and invalid-if rules bound what must not be added.

When a high-fidelity reference already expresses behavior well, point to it instead of rewriting it into a weaker prose summary. The spec should capture the task-specific delta, authority boundary, and proof target around that reference.

When to use

Use when a project or feature is clear enough to define before implementation.

Inputs

  • Clarified request
  • CONTEXT.md if available
  • Constraints
  • Known commands
  • Acceptance criteria or desired behavior
  • Authoritative references when available: existing tests, code, schemas, HTML/mockups, rubrics, external specs, or a source implementation to port

Reference-first rule

Prefer the richest authoritative source that already expresses the intended behavior.

For each reference, record:

  • the exact file, test, artifact, URL, or symbol
  • what behavior or decision it governs
  • the task-specific delta, if this slice intentionally differs

Do not restate a detailed test suite, implementation, mockup, or rubric line by line merely to make the spec self-contained. Keep the reference available and write only the interpretation needed to bound this task.

If the user request and an authoritative reference conflict, surface the conflict as an explicit decision or open question. Do not silently reconcile them.

Workflow

  1. State the objective.
  2. Identify the user or use case.
  3. Identify authoritative references and what each one governs.
  4. Record the task-specific delta from those references; use none when the reference is the intended contract as-is.
  5. Define observable acceptance criteria, pointing to authoritative references where they already encode the behavior precisely.
  6. Record non-goals.
  7. Define the spec ceiling: do not add behavior, interfaces, refactors, dependencies, or adjacent cleanup beyond what is required to satisfy the acceptance criteria and reference-backed delta.
  8. List likely failure modes and name the primary failure mode for this slice.
  9. Record constraints.
  10. List only non-obvious run, test, build, and verification commands that matter to the slice.
  11. Define the smallest verification demo.
  12. Record open questions and reference conflicts instead of inventing a resolution.
  13. When applicable, name compatibility seams that must remain import-compatible or output-compatible.
  14. When applicable, record invalid-if constraints that would make the slice non-viable.
  15. For delegated, autonomous, multi-session, or replanned work, optionally record a contract ID, parent ID, base commit, issue time, and replan reason.
  16. If satisfying the task requires behavior outside the ceiling or contradicts an authoritative reference, update or renegotiate the spec before implementing that expansion.

Read the full file on GitHub · 112 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. 9d ago First seen · 112 lines · 40 tokens per session scan A 81eb29f6eeb0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mini-spec is a skill published in the GitHub repository tmusser/ai-engineering-skills (4 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 1,053 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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