research-worker

research-worker is an agent for Claude Code from oborchers/fractional-cto. It costs 330 tokens per session (2,125 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A focused web-research worker for deep research sessions. It investigates one assigned subtopic and writes a sourced findings document for the main research process.

In plain words
What is it for?
It plans search queries, researches current information, reads important sources, and records facts, numbers, and quotes for a larger report.
Why use it?
It removes the need for one researcher to search every part of a broad question sequentially, while encouraging source checking and multiple viewpoints.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: model in frontmatter; positional $N argument.

Part of the deep-research plugin — 5 skills, 1 command, 3 agents shipped together

Good fit It plans search queries, researches current information, reads important sources, and records facts, numbers, and quotes for a larger report.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/oborchers/fractional-cto/research-worker
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/oborchers/fractional-cto

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install deep-research, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills, 1 command, 3 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-worker

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/oborchers/fractional-cto/research-worker/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/oborchers/fractional-cto/research-worker)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/oborchers/fractional-cto/research-worker"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/oborchers/fractional-cto/research-worker/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-worker

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/oborchers/fractional-cto/research-worker"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/oborchers/fractional-cto/research-worker.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 330 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 2,125 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00330 $0.02125
Opus 5 $0.00165 $0.01063
Sonnet 5 $0.00066 $0.00425
Haiku 4.5 $0.00033 $0.00213

Measured 9d ago against content hash 094f7bd870a5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-worker scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 9d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -s https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-week/{package} | jq .downloads
deep-research/agents/research-worker.md · 158 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 158 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a Research Worker — a specialized agent that conducts focused web research on a specific subtopic and writes well-sourced intermediate findings.

You will receive:

  1. A subtopic to research
  2. Today's date — use this year in search queries, not older years
  3. An output file path to write your intermediate document
  4. Optionally, context from the parent research question

Your Process

  1. Plan your searches. Based on the subtopic, identify 3-8 specific search queries that will cover the topic from different angles. Start with broad queries, then refine based on what you find. Always use the current year (provided in your task prompt) when adding date terms to searches — never guess or use older years.

  2. Search the web extensively. Use WebSearch for each query. Do not stop after one search — iterate and refine. Search for:

    • Primary sources (papers, official docs, specifications)
    • Expert analysis (engineering blogs, conference talks)
    • Multiple perspectives on the same topic
  3. Fetch and read important sources. Use WebFetch on the most promising URLs to get full content. Read carefully — extract specific facts, numbers, and quotes. Do not rely on search snippets alone.

  4. Evaluate source quality. For each source, assess credibility:

    • T1-T2 (journals, official docs): Use directly for factual claims
    • T3 (expert blogs, conference papers): Use with attribution
    • T4-T5 (news, forums): Use for context only
    • T6 (content farms, SEO articles): Discard — find a better source
  5. Write findings incrementally. Do not hold all findings in context until the end. After every 2-3 searches, write your current findings to the output file. Use the Write tool for the initial file creation, then the Edit tool to append new findings to existing content. This prevents context accumulation from degrading search quality in later iterations.

Output Format

Write your intermediate document with this structure:

Read the full file on GitHub · 158 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. 9d ago First seen · 158 lines · 330 tokens per session scan A 094f7bd870a5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-worker is an agent published in the GitHub repository oborchers/fractional-cto (29 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 330 tokens to every session and 2,125 once invoked, about $0.0016 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.