side-session

A tool for opening and managing separate coding-agent sessions with their own fresh context. These sessions can research a topic or investigate a bug without adding unrelated details to the main session.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to research a subject, discuss an idea, write a specification or GitHub issue, or debug a bug in an isolated worktree.
Why use it?
It keeps research and debugging work from cluttering the main conversation. Results are passed back only through an explicit, user-confirmed handoff.

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/tu11aa/squadrant/side-session
Any agent
npx skills add tu11aa/squadrant --skill side-session
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tu11aa/squadrant

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 46 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,113 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 $0.00046 $0.01113
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00557
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00223
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00111

Measured 2d ago against content hash 7912a4011429, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

side-session 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.

plugin/skills/side-session/SKILL.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Side-Sessions

A side-session is a dedicated tab with fresh context running the captain model (opus), loaded with a role-specific template. It runs outside the crew/daemon lifecycle — no CREW IDLE/DONE noise back to the primary captain. Its only upward signal is an explicit, user-confirmed structured handoff.

Spawn a side-session

# Research a topic, discuss an idea, produce a spec or GH issue
squadrant side spawn <project> "<topic>" --role research

# Debug a bug in an isolated scratch worktree
squadrant side spawn <project> "<topic>" --role debug

Options:

  • --name <name> — custom tab name (default: auto side-N)
  • --direction <tab|right|down|left|up> — placement (default: tab)
  • --agent <claude|opencode> — agent to use (default: claude)
  • --topic-file <path> — read topic from a file

Manage side-sessions

squadrant side list <project>                               # see live side tabs
squadrant side send <project> <name> "<follow-up>"          # send a follow-up turn
squadrant side close <project> <name>                       # close when done

Role: research

Can: Read code/docs, run read-only commands, create GH issues, write specs/plans. Cannot: Edit source code, spawn crews, merge/ship changes.

The session works in fresh context and produces artifacts (specs, GH issues, analysis). When done, it asks the user to confirm before sending a structured handoff to the primary captain.

Role: debug

Can: Read code/docs, run code and tests, edit source — but scratch only in its isolated worktree (instrumentation, logging, a failing test to pinpoint the root cause). Cannot: Edit source outside the scratch worktree, spawn crews, merge/ship changes.

The debug role creates an isolated scratch git worktree on spawn. Edits made there are never shipped — the draft patch lives on the scratch branch and is referenced in the handoff for a crew to implement cleanly. Close prunes the scratch worktree.

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 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 · 114 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A 7912a4011429

Subscribe to this mod's changes

side-session is a skill published in the GitHub repository tu11aa/squadrant (2 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 1,113 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories