start

start is a skill for Claude Code from tranhieutt/software_development_department. It costs 49 tokens per session (1,748 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided starting workflow for people beginning a new software project or coding session. It checks the project's current state and asks questions to route the user to a suitable development workflow.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for first-time onboarding, checking whether a project has code or architecture documents, and choosing the next workflow.
Why use it?
It reduces the uncertainty of deciding what to do first when there is little or no project context.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

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/tranhieutt/software_development_department/start
Any agent
npx skills add tranhieutt/software_development_department --skill start
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tranhieutt/software_development_department

Made for: Claude Code.

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 start

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/start.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/start)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/start"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/start.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,748 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 5.1 $0.00049 $0.01748
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00874
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00350
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00175

Measured 2d ago against content hash 24d1394cd923, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start 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.

.claude/skills/start/SKILL.md · 173 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 173 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Guided Onboarding

This skill is the entry point for new users. It does NOT assume you have a project idea, a framework preference, or any prior architecture. It asks first, then routes you to the right software engineering workflow.


Workflow

1. Detect Project State (Silent)

Before asking anything, silently gather context so you can tailor your guidance. Do NOT show these results unprompted — they inform your recommendations, not the conversation opener.

Check:

  • Tech Stack configured? Read README.md or .claude/docs/technical-preferences.md to see if frameworks are defined.
  • Architecture doc exists? Check for design/architecture/ or docs/architecture.md.
  • Source code exists? Glob for source files in src/ (*.ts, *.js, *.py, *.go, *.java, *.rs, *.cpp).
  • Prototypes exist? Check for subdirectories in prototypes/.
  • Production artifacts? Check for files in production/ or .github/workflows/.

Store these findings internally. You will use them to validate the user's self-assessment and to tailor follow-up recommendations.


2. Ask Where the User Is

This is the first thing the user sees. Present these 4 options clearly:

Welcome to the Software Development Department!

Before I suggest anything, I'd like to understand where you're starting from. Where are you at with your software project right now?

A) No idea yet — I don't have a project concept at all. I want to explore and figure out what to build.

B) Vague idea — I have a rough problem to solve or a general app idea (e.g., "a SaaS for HR" or "an internal dashboard") but nothing concrete.

C) Clear concept — I know the core idea — target users, basic features, maybe a pitch sentence — but haven't formalized the architecture yet.

D) Existing work — I already have design docs, prototypes, code, or significant planning done. I want to organize, refactor, or continue the work.

Wait for the user's answer. Do not proceed until they respond.

Read the full file on GitHub · 173 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 · 173 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 24d1394cd923

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start is a skill published in the GitHub repository tranhieutt/software_development_department (71 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 1,748 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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