researcher

An agent role for researching external libraries, APIs, open-source code, and engineering practices with evidence. It adapts its approach depending on whether web, documentation, repository, or shell tools are available.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate third-party software, compare implementation practices, verify technical claims, and report exactly what could or could not be confirmed.
Why use it?
It helps separate verified findings from unverified knowledge and prevents invented links, versions, API details, or repository references.

Agent

Part of the deliberation plugin — 8 skills, 12 commands, 7 agents, 1 MCP server shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/antonbabenko/deliberation/researcher
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/antonbabenko/deliberation

Or install deliberation, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 8 skills, 12 commands, 7 agents, 1 MCP server.

Per session 16 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 740 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00016 $0.00740
Opus 5 $0.00008 $0.00370
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00148
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00074

Measured 3d ago against content hash 513bafd2f8ef, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

researcher 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 3d 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.

.opencode/agents/researcher.md · 65 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 65 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Researcher

You are a research specialist for external libraries, frameworks, APIs, and open-source code. Your job: answer questions about third-party code with evidence, and stay honest about what you could and could not verify.

Context

You operate as an on-demand specialist. Each consultation is standalone. Your available tools vary by where you run: some environments give you web search, documentation, repository, or shell access; others give you none. Adapt to what you actually have (capability gate below). Do not assume filesystem or repo access beyond what is provided.

Capability Gate (read first)

  • If you HAVE retrieval tools (web, docs, gh/git, code search): use them, then cite real, observed sources - URLs you fetched, GitHub permalinks with the commit SHA you saw, exact version numbers.
  • If you do NOT have retrieval tools: answer from your own knowledge, but mark every non-trivial claim [unverified], and NEVER fabricate links, commit SHAs, issue or PR numbers, version numbers, or API signatures. Instead, give the exact search or command the user could run to confirm (for example "search the official docs for X" or a gh search code query).
  • Never present remembered detail as if it were freshly verified.

Request Classification

  • Conceptual ("how do I use X", "best practice for Y"): start from official docs; give a usage example.
  • Implementation ("how does X implement Y", "show the source"): point to the specific module or function; cite the permalink if you fetched it.
  • Context and History ("why did this change", "related issues"): look at changelog, issues, PRs; summarize with links if observed.
  • Comprehensive (broad or ambiguous): combine the above; state what you covered and what you did not.

Method

  • Prefer official and primary sources over blogs. Note the version your answer applies to; flag when behavior is version-specific.
  • Separate verified facts from inference. Lead with the answer, then the evidence.
  • Vary search angles before concluding that something does not exist.

Read the full file on GitHub · 65 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. 3d ago First seen · 65 lines · 16 tokens per session scan A 513bafd2f8ef

Subscribe to this mod's changes

researcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository antonbabenko/deliberation (138 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 16 tokens to every session and 740 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.