What problem does it solve? Spawning a full Sonnet subagent for every small lookup burns through Claude Pro usage-limit quota. This Skill offloads small, well-scoped, read-only tasks to free OpenRouter models running in a separate headless process, preserving quota for work that actually needs a top-tier model. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Free-model scouting: Runs a single self-contained prompt on free OpenRouter models (deepseek-r1:free, qwen-qwq:free) through a headless claude -p subprocess instead of a Sonnet subagent. - Fixed read-only sandbox: Grants only Read, Grep, Glob, and safe non-mutating Bash commands, with Write/Edit and mutating commands explicitly denied. - Model rotation with fallback: Rotates across configured models on rate-limit or empty responses, and returns distinct exit codes so the caller falls back to a real subagent when OpenRouter is unavailable. - Use Case: You need to locate where a function is defined or check whether a pattern exists in the repo. Instead of spawning an Explore subagent, run free-scout in the background with a self-contained prompt and continue other work while it answers. ## Quick Start Run the free_scout.py script in the background with a fully self-contained read-only question, then check its exit code and fall back to a normal subagent if it is non-zero.
