agent-spec-estimate

agent-spec-estimate is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ZhangHanDong/agent-spec. It costs 116 tokens per session (2,500 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An effort-estimation method for agent-spec Task Contracts, which are structured descriptions of software work. It estimates work in rounds, meaning cycles of an AI agent doing and checking tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to estimate one or more .spec files, compare tasks, assess risks, and compare estimates with past results.
Why use it?
It helps plan time, scope, budget, and team capacity when the amount of agent work is uncertain.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to estimate one or more .spec files, compare tasks, assess risks, and compare estimates with past results.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/zhanghandong/agent-spec/agent-spec-estimate
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 ZhangHanDong/agent-spec --skill agent-spec-estimate
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ZhangHanDong/agent-spec

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

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README.md
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Per session 116 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,500 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00116 $0.02500
Opus 5 $0.00058 $0.01250
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00500
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00250

Measured 9d ago against content hash b913757e58e6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

agent-spec-estimate 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/agent-spec-estimate/SKILL.md · 283 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 283 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Spec Estimate

Version: 1.3.1 | Last Updated: 2026-08-14 | Tracks: agent-spec 1.4.0

You are an expert at estimating AI agent work effort from structured Task Contracts. Help users by:

  • Estimating specs: Read a .spec/.spec.md file and produce a round-based effort estimate
  • Comparing tasks: Rank multiple specs by effort for sprint planning
  • Risk assessment: Identify which Contract elements drive uncertainty
  • Calibrating: Adjust estimates based on actual lifecycle retry counts

IMPORTANT: CLI Prerequisite Check

Before running any agent-spec command, Claude MUST check:

command -v agent-spec || cargo install agent-spec

If agent-spec is not installed, inform the user:

agent-spec CLI not found. Install with: cargo install agent-spec

Quick Reference

Action Command Output
Estimate a spec agent-spec contract <spec> then apply estimation Round-based breakdown table
Batch estimate Run on all specs in specs/ Sorted effort ranking
Calibrate from history agent-spec explain <spec> --history Compare predicted vs actual rounds
Library sizing signal (0.3.0) agent-spec audit --spec-dir specs --format json Counts of rules/scenarios/unproven-rules/open-questions to weight remaining effort

0.3.0 signal: audit gives a mechanical library-level view — unproven_rules and open_questions are leading indicators of remaining work (a Rule with no proving Example, or an open Discovery question, is unfinished). Use it as input to risk coefficients, not as a substitute for round estimation.

Core Method

Contract → Rounds Mapping

A Task Contract has structured elements that map directly to estimation inputs:

Contract Element Estimation Input How It Affects Estimate
Completion Criteria scenarios Module decomposition Each scenario ≈ 1 module (1-15 rounds)
Decisions (fixed tech choices) Risk reduction Known tech → risk 1.0; new tech → risk 1.3-1.5
Boundaries: Allowed Changes Scope breadth More paths → more modules; fewer paths → focused
Boundaries: Forbidden Constraint overhead Each prohibition adds 0-1 verification rounds
Constraints: Must NOT Structural checks Pattern avoidance adds ~1 round per constraint
Out of Scope Scope control Reduces estimate (explicitly excluded work)
inherits: project/org Inherited overhead Inherited constraints add ~1-2 rounds for compliance
Exception scenario count Quality indicator More exceptions = better spec but more rounds

Read the full file on GitHub · 283 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 · 283 lines · 116 tokens per session scan A b913757e58e6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

agent-spec-estimate is a skill published in the GitHub repository ZhangHanDong/agent-spec (454 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 116 tokens to every session and 2,500 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.