apple-dev-research

apple-dev-research is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Xopoko/build-swift-apps. It costs 37 tokens per session (546 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A search tool for community articles about Apple development, including Swift, SwiftUI, Xcode, iPhone, and Mac software.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find and return a short reading list of relevant articles with their titles, sites, dates, links, and relevance.
Why use it?
It helps find practical tutorials and write-ups outside Apple's official documentation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT variable, but also agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions Claude Code.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the build-swift-apps plugin — 61 skills, 3 commands, 3 MCP servers shipped together

Good fit Use it to find and return a short reading list of relevant articles with their titles, sites, dates, links, and relevance.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add Xopoko/build-swift-apps
Claude Code
/plugin install build-swift-apps

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install build-swift-apps, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 61 skills, 3 commands, 3 MCP servers.

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 apple-dev-research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xopoko/build-swift-apps/apple-dev-research/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/xopoko/build-swift-apps/apple-dev-research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xopoko/build-swift-apps/apple-dev-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xopoko/build-swift-apps/apple-dev-research/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 apple-dev-research

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xopoko/build-swift-apps/apple-dev-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xopoko/build-swift-apps/apple-dev-research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 546 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 $0.00037 $0.00546
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00273
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00109
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00055

Measured 9d ago against content hash f458b9ba903f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

apple-dev-research 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/appledevsearch.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/apple-dev-research/SKILL.md · 41 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 41 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Apple Developer Research

Bundled commands use $PLUGIN_ROOT ($env:PLUGIN_ROOT in PowerShell; same path suffix) for the plugin root. Set it once: use the host's plugin-root variable when defined (Claude Code: PLUGIN_ROOT="$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT"), otherwise the absolute path of this plugin's root directory.

Use Apple Dev Search for Apple-platform community content when the user wants articles, tutorials, or reading material rather than official docs or generic web results. Do not hard-code service counts; query --counts when counts matter.

Workflow

  1. Start with one focused query using the user's wording.
  2. Hard cap ordinary requests at 3 commands total: initial search plus 2 retries. Stop once 3 useful candidates are found.
  3. If broad/noisy, retry with --title-only and tighter terms.
  4. Use syntax when helpful: quotes, |, -, *, ~1, parentheses.
  5. For fresh reading lists, inspect --recent.
  6. Verify selected article URLs with Crawl4AI only when snippets are insufficient or candidates are close. Avoid generic web search/Tavily/Firecrawl unless Crawl4AI fails.
  7. Return 3-8 links with title, blog, date, URL, and one-line relevance.

Commands

python3 "$PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/apple-dev-research/scripts/appledevsearch.py" --query 'build speed' --limit 5
python3 "$PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/apple-dev-research/scripts/appledevsearch.py" --query '"incremental builds" | "compile time"' --title-only --limit 5
python3 "$PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/apple-dev-research/scripts/appledevsearch.py" --query 'swift testing -uikit' --limit 5
python3 "$PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/apple-dev-research/scripts/appledevsearch.py" --recent --limit 8
python3 "$PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/apple-dev-research/scripts/appledevsearch.py" --counts

Use full text for errors/API/framework names; title-only for broad topics. Keep user terminology in at least one query before expanding synonyms.

Reusable search URL:

https://appledevsearch.com/#q=<urlencoded query>&titleOnly=true|false

Read the full file on GitHub · 41 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files 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 · 41 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A f458b9ba903f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

apple-dev-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository Xopoko/build-swift-apps (45 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 546 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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