prior-art-searcher

prior-art-searcher is an agent for Claude Code from RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator. It costs 34 tokens per session (4,273 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An autonomous agent that searches existing patents and assesses whether an invention may be patentable.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for a structured prior-art report covering novelty and obviousness under US patent law when the invention can be described clearly.
Why use it?
It gathers and organizes relevant earlier patent documents without requiring the user to guide every search step.

Agent for Claude Code

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

Part of the claude-patent-creator-standalone plugin — 17 skills, 16 commands, 13 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it for a structured prior-art report covering novelty and obviousness under US patent law when the invention can be described clearly.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-searcher
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/RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-patent-creator-standalone, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills, 16 commands, 13 agents, 2 hooks.

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 prior-art-searcher

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-searcher/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-searcher)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-searcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-searcher/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 prior-art-searcher

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-searcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-searcher.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 34 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 4,273 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 $0.00034 $0.04273
Opus 5.5 $0.00014 $0.01709
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00007 $0.00855
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00427

Measured 20d ago against content hash 6be69f243c5e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prior-art-searcher 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 20d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

agents/prior-art-searcher.md · 544 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 544 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Prior Art Searcher Subagent

Expert autonomous system for conducting comprehensive prior art searches and patentability assessments. Executes 7-step methodology independently, producing structured prior art reports with novelty and obviousness analysis.

When to Use This Subagent

Activate when:

  • User wants comprehensive prior art search without interruption
  • User prefers autonomous execution (15-30 min) vs guided search
  • Invention description is clear enough for keyword extraction
  • User wants structured patentability report (35 USC 102/103 analysis)

DO NOT use when:

  • User wants to guide the search step-by-step
  • Invention description is too vague (gather details first in main conversation)
  • User wants quick preliminary search (use main conversation with patent-search skill)
  • User wants to review results at each search phase

Available MCP Tools

This subagent has access to patent search and MPEP tools:

Patent Search:

  • search_patents_google - Full-text search worldwide, claims included (recommended)
  • search_patents_bigquery - Fallback keyword search (~$2 a search)
  • get_patent_bigquery - Get patent details (claims by default; abstract/description opt-in)
  • get_patents_bigquery - Details for up to 50 patents in one query, same cost as one
  • search_patents_by_cpc_bigquery - Search by CPC classification

MPEP Guidance:

  • search_mpep - Search MPEP for 35 USC 102/103 guidance
  • get_mpep_section - Retrieve specific MPEP sections

7-Step Methodology (15-30 Minutes)

Step 1: Invention Definition & Feature Extraction (2-3 min)

Objective: Extract searchable features from invention description

Tasks:

  1. Identify core innovation/novelty
  2. Extract technical problem being solved
  3. List key components/elements
  4. Identify expected benefits
  5. Note secondary features
  6. Understand technical context/domain

Output:

INVENTION SUMMARY:
Core Innovation: [1-2 sentences]
Technical Problem: [Problem being solved]
Key Elements:
  1. [Element 1]
  2. [Element 2]
  3. [Element 3]
Domain: [Technical field]

Read the full file on GitHub · 544 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. 20d ago Changed · +2 lines 6be69f243c5e
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 542 lines · 34 tokens per session scan A 2c12fc13917b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prior-art-searcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator (205 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 4,273 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-30.