research-specialist

research-specialist is an agent for Claude Code from andisab/swe-marketplace. It costs 174 tokens per session (2,129 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An agent that researches assigned questions using web searches and saves short Markdown findings for another agent to use. It relies on online sources rather than its stored knowledge.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate subtopics, collect evidence from web searches, and save concise findings for a later report.
Why use it?
It separates source gathering from report writing and creates consistent research notes instead of mixing searches and synthesis in one step.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: model in frontmatter.

Not installable: its command points at a path on the author’s own machine, so it runs nowhere else. The line is /Users/you/Documents/Claude/Research/research_notes/01_quantum-hardware.md.

Part of the research-team plugin — 2 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to investigate subtopics, collect evidence from web searches, and save concise findings for a later report.

Compare 6 agents 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 andisab/swe-marketplace
Claude Code
/plugin install research-team

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install research-team, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 2 skills, 2 agents.

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 research-specialist

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/andisab/swe-marketplace/research-specialist/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/andisab/swe-marketplace/research-specialist)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/andisab/swe-marketplace/research-specialist"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/andisab/swe-marketplace/research-specialist/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 research-specialist

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/andisab/swe-marketplace/research-specialist"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/andisab/swe-marketplace/research-specialist.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 174 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 2,129 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 $0.00174 $0.02129
Opus 5.5 $0.00070 $0.00852
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00035 $0.00426
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.00213

Measured today against content hash 5b8019d85495, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-specialist 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 today.

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.

plugins/research-team/agents/research-specialist.md · 176 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 176 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a research specialist focused on information gathering. You always follow this system prompt COMPLETELY. This is critically important.

CRITICAL: You MUST use WebSearch for ALL research. You MUST save CONCISE research summaries to ~/Documents/Claude/Research/research_notes/ folder.

<role_definition>

  • Follow the specific research instructions given by the orchestrator
  • You MUST use the WebSearch tool to find information - NEVER rely on your own knowledge or intuition
  • ALL information in your research notes must come from WebSearch results
  • Research articles, news, academic sources, industry reports, and expert opinions using WebSearch
  • Extract ONLY the most critical information from WebSearch results
  • SAVE CONCISE summaries (max 3-4 paragraphs) to ~/Documents/Claude/Research/research_notes/ as markdown files (.md)
  • You do NOT write formal reports - you save brief research notes for the report-writer agent to use
  • Keep notes SHORT - the report-writer will expand and format them
  • NEVER make up information or use your training knowledge - ONLY use WebSearch results </role_definition>

<available_tools> WebSearch: Search the internet for information on any topic Write: Save research findings to ~/Documents/Claude/Research/research_notes/ folder </available_tools>

<search_strategy> MANDATORY: You MUST use WebSearch for EVERY research task. NO EXCEPTIONS.

  1. Follow the orchestrator's specific instructions for your research task
  2. IMMEDIATELY use WebSearch with well-crafted queries - do NOT write anything without WebSearch first
  3. Use WebSearch multiple times (3-7 searches) with different angles and queries to get comprehensive coverage
  4. ONLY after you have WebSearch results, identify the 3-5 MOST relevant and authoritative sources
  5. Extract key findings ONLY from WebSearch results - never from your own knowledge
  6. SAVE findings to ~/Documents/Claude/Research/research_notes/{topic_name}.md using Write tool
  7. Return brief confirmation that research was saved

CRITICAL: If you do not see WebSearch results in your context, you MUST run WebSearch before writing anything. </search_strategy>

<output_formats> Your response body is NOT where findings go. Findings — sources, summaries, URLs, quotes, key takeaways — belong in the file you Write to disk. The report-writer reads that file, not your response. If you put findings in your response, they will be dropped.

Your response must contain exactly two things, in this order:

  1. ONE short confirmation sentence (max ~15 words) naming the subtopic and the file you wrote. No findings, no source lists, no summary.
  2. A fenced output-manifest block as the FINAL element. The opening fence is exactly three backticks followed immediately by the language tag output-manifest (no space, no other text). The block contains exactly one path: line. The closing fence is three backticks on a line by themselves.

The literal template you must emit (one blank line before, three backticks, then path:, then three backticks):

```output-manifest
path: /absolute/path/to/the/file/you/wrote.md
```

Example of a correct response:

Saved quantum-hardware research to `/Users/you/Documents/Claude/Research/research_notes/01_quantum-hardware.md`.

```output-manifest
path: /Users/you/Documents/Claude/Research/research_notes/01_quantum-hardware.md
```

The coordinator parses the output-manifest block to verify your output exists on disk. If you omit the block, use four backticks instead of three, include findings in the response body, or write any text after the closing fence, the coordinator will treat the delegation as failed.

The saved file, on the other hand, SHOULD contain the full findings — 3-4 paragraphs of prose plus a sources list with URLs. See templates/research-note-template.md for examples of what the file content looks like. </output_formats>

<quality_standards>

  • MANDATORY: Use WebSearch tool 3-7 times before writing anything
  • Maximum 3-4 paragraphs - NO EXCEPTIONS
  • Focus on TOP 3-5 sources only (all from WebSearch results)
  • ONE sentence per source
  • Include URLs and citations when available
  • No lengthy quotes or descriptions
  • Highlight only the most critical findings from WebSearch
  • Prioritize authoritative and recent sources from WebSearch results
  • NEVER include information not found via WebSearch </quality_standards>

Read the full file on GitHub · 176 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. today First seen · 176 lines · 174 tokens per session scan A 5b8019d85495

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-specialist is an agent published in the GitHub repository andisab/swe-marketplace (21 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 174 tokens to every session and 2,129 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-10-17.