Mods

seek

Look around in few, lean steps.

It comes with the pack and is on from the start.

The moment

You ask for a change, and before touching anything Claude looks around: a search, a file, another search, another file.

Without seek

Each look is a step that re-reads the conversation. And whatever Claude reads stays in the conversation, read again by every later step until the session is compacted. A whole file opened for three lines is paid for again and again.

With seek

With your first prompt, and again as the session grows, seek passes on your setting: put the searches you can already name into one go, read only the lines that matter, and don’t read again what the session already holds. It runs on your machine and sends nothing anywhere.

Here is the same look around, without and with seek’s setting. Watch what stays behind.

Show
  1. a searchgrep -rn "parse_date" src/
  2. a whole filecat src/dates.py
  3. another searchgrep -n "format" src/dates.py
  4. another whole filecat src/formats.py
  5. the first file, againcat src/dates.py
  1. both searches in one gogrep -n "parse_date\|format" src/dates.py src/formats.py
  2. only the lines that mattersed -n 40,72p src/dates.py; sed -n 12,30p src/formats.py

Five steps, two whole files, one of them read twice. All of it stays.Two steps, and only the lines that matter stay behind.

What seek adds beside your prompt
The person's setting for looking around in this session (about 220k tokens of context so far): every response you make re-reads all of it, and whatever you read stays in it, re-read by every later response until it is compacted. So look around in few, lean steps: put the searches and reads you can already name into one command; when a search shows where to look, read those places in the same step; read only the definitions or lines you need (grep -n first, then a range around them), not whole files or long ranges; and do not read again what this session already holds unless it changed.

What we measured

Against the pack without it: 12% cheaper11.9% cheaper, 95% range 5.9 to 17.2% cheaper11.9% cheaper
95% range 5.9 to 17.2% cheaper
20 per arm
Opus 5.5, 16 Oct 2026 in a fresh session, 16% cheaper16.4% cheaper, 95% range 10.5 to 21.8% cheaper16.4% cheaper
95% range 10.5 to 21.8% cheaper
24 per arm
Opus 5.5, 16 Oct 2026 on a TypeScript library, 16% cheaper15.9% cheaper, 95% range 8.6 to 22.5% cheaper15.9% cheaper
95% range 8.6 to 22.5% cheaper
24 per arm (warm runs)
Opus 5.5, 16 Oct 2026 in a long session. Claude followed the setting in all 44 runs44 of 4444 of 44
44 runs
Opus 5.5, 16 Oct 2026 that got it.

Every measurement for seek

The dot is the measured change, the bar around it the 95% range, the upright line no change. Left of the line is cheaper or fewer.

Tried for seek and dropped: Windows after a search, An order in the middle of a search, seek's map, left off.

Where it doesn’t help

The smallest lookups gain nothing, and sometimes take a step more. The first two versions of seek did the opposite of this one: they added the lines around a search’s hits, saved steps, and cost more, because the lines stayed behind. They are in the graveyard.

Turn it on or off

/mods seek off turns it off. map: true turns on the map of where a search’s hits sit, which saved nothing certain. Every option is in the README; the code is in seek/.