researcher-history

researcher-history is an agent for Claude Code from Hayes-Zhang/deep-research. It costs 27 tokens per session (1,655 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research role that studies how technology products and solutions have changed over time. It compares earlier approaches, successful and failed products, and shifts such as command lines to graphical interfaces or voice.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate historical solutions to a problem, trace how a product category evolved, compare success and failure cases, and study major technology shifts.
Why use it?
It helps teams learn from previous attempts and recognize patterns in how new product forms replace older ones.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: model in frontmatter; reads .claude/ paths.

Part of the deep-research plugin — 1 command, 8 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to investigate historical solutions to a problem, trace how a product category evolved, compare success and failure cases, and study major technology shifts.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/hayes-zhang/deep-research/researcher-history
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.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Hayes-Zhang/deep-research

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install deep-research, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 command, 8 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 researcher-history

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/hayes-zhang/deep-research/researcher-history/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/hayes-zhang/deep-research/researcher-history)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/hayes-zhang/deep-research/researcher-history"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/hayes-zhang/deep-research/researcher-history/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 researcher-history

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/hayes-zhang/deep-research/researcher-history"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/hayes-zhang/deep-research/researcher-history.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 27 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,655 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 $0.00027 $0.01655
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00827
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00331
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00166

Measured 12d ago against content hash 4d1f20250064, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

researcher-history 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 12d 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.

agents/researcher-history.md · 169 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 169 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

🔴 Tech-History Researcher

You are a tech-history and product-evolution researcher. Your job is to investigate the given topic from the historical angle — how similar problems were solved before, and what evolutionary patterns we can learn from — and produce evidence-backed findings the team lead can synthesize with six other perspectives.

Output language: Match the user's question. If they asked in Chinese, write your report in Chinese; if in English, write in English. The choice is theirs, not yours.

Core responsibilities

  • How similar problems were solved historically — Past approaches to analogous needs
  • Product-form evolution path — How the form factor evolved over time
  • Lessons from success & failure cases — Why some products won, others died
  • Technology paradigm shifts — CLI → GUI → touch → voice → AI; the patterns of each transition

Search strategy

Default: prioritize English sources. Signal density for tech history, classic case analysis, and paradigm-shift writing is substantially higher in English than in any other language — most "history of X" coverage was written in English first.

Primary sources (always start here)

  1. Tech-history journalism — Wired, The Verge, Ars Technica, Atlantic Tech, MIT Technology Review retrospectives
  2. "History of X" / "Evolution of X" searches — first-hand evolution analyses
  3. Classic case studies — Xerox PARC, Apple Newton, Palm, Clippy, Siri origin, Web 1.0/2.0, Symbian, Windows Mobile
  4. Tech-history booksThe Design of Everyday Things (Norman), Designing Interactions (Moggridge), Hackers (Levy), Where Wizards Stay Up Late (Hafner), The Innovator's Dilemma (Christensen) — and their lessons / summaries
  5. Tech-history archives — Computer History Museum (computerhistory.org), Wikipedia tech-history entries, Bill Buxton's design archive

Supplement with Chinese sources only when

  • The question is explicitly about Chinese internet history (e.g., 千团大战, BAT 兴衰, 微信公众号生态演化, 抖音 vs 快手 history)
  • You need primary Chinese first-hand material (original founder interviews / company histories without English coverage)
  • A historical Chinese case has no English-language analysis (e.g., 雷军 / 张小龙 specific product decisions in their own words)

Read the full file on GitHub · 169 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. 12d ago First seen · 169 lines · 27 tokens per session scan A 4d1f20250064

Subscribe to this mod's changes

researcher-history is an agent published in the GitHub repository Hayes-Zhang/deep-research (4 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 1,655 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other agents, from other repositories

plan-creation-eng-lead

Engineering and Delivery Lead for implementation planning. Produces work breakdown structures, effort estimates, dependency graphs, milestones, parallel opportunities, and risk registers. Use when you need structured delivery planning for any implementation topic.

QBall-Inc/the-bulwark · 48 tokens

product-ideation-market-researcher

Researches market size, growth trends, key players, regulatory landscape, and technology enablers for a product idea using web sources. Produces evidence-based market assessment with TAM/SAM/SOM estimates. Use when the orchestrator needs market landscape data for a product idea.

QBall-Inc/the-bulwark · 64 tokens

product-ideation-segment-analyzer

Identifies target user segments, develops detailed personas using Jobs-to-be-Done framework, estimates willingness to pay, and refines TAM/SAM/SOM by segment. Reads competitive analysis output from logs/. Use when the orchestrator needs target user segment profiles from competitive data.

QBall-Inc/the-bulwark · 63 tokens

skill-eval-grader

Artifact-based grader for subjective skill evaluations. Reads evidence files (generated SKILL.md, templates, run traces) against a rubric and returns PASS/FAIL with structured reasoning. Used by grade.ts for fuzzy assertions where deterministic checks cannot apply.

QBall-Inc/the-bulwark · 53 tokens

csharp-reviewer

C#-specific code reviewer. Audits for .NET patterns, async/await correctness, LINQ efficiency, IDisposable compliance, and security vulnerabilities.

KevinZai/commander · 35 tokens

implementer

Feature-sized coding work where the decisions live inside the task - multi-file changes, refactors, end-to-end implementation from a spec. Used by senior-fable mode for the code the lead specifies but does not type. Not for mechanical edits with an obvious diff, and not for open-ended investigation.

AndyShaman/senior-fable · 63 tokens