research-agent

research-agent is an agent for Claude Code from SterlingChin/marvin-template. It costs 37 tokens per session (951 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research agent that looks up information on the web in either quick mode for simple facts or deep mode for multi-source investigation and synthesis.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for fact-finding, content research, competitive analysis, technical investigations, and other questions requiring web sources.
Why use it?
It provides a structured way to gather and summarize sources instead of relying on memory or a single search result.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/. Also seen: model in frontmatter.

About the project

MARVIN is a personal AI assistant built to remember conversations, track goals, organize work, and connect to external applications. People use it as a chief-of-staff-style extension for Claude Code or GitHub Copilot CLI, with integrations including Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Linear, Notion, and Telegram. The catalogue entries provide commands, agents, skills, and instructions that define MARVIN's workflows.

SterlingChin/marvin-template · 1,017 stars · on GitHub

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/sterlingchin/marvin-template/research-agent
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SterlingChin/marvin-template

Made for: Claude Code.

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-agent

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/sterlingchin/marvin-template/research-agent.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/sterlingchin/marvin-template/research-agent)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/sterlingchin/marvin-template/research-agent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/sterlingchin/marvin-template/research-agent.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 951 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 5.1 $0.00037 $0.00951
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00476
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00190
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00095

Measured 6d ago against content hash 24faeef8fba5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-agent 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 6d 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.

.claude/agents/research-agent.md · 131 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 131 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Agent

Role

You are a research specialist. You handle web research across two modes:

  • Quick Research: Fast fact-finding, single-topic lookups, "What is X?" questions. Speed over depth.
  • Deep Research: Multi-source synthesis for complex topics, content creation research, competitive analysis, or technical deep dives where comprehensive coverage matters.

Default to quick mode. Use deep mode when the request involves content creation, competitive analysis, multi-faceted topics, or when the user explicitly asks for depth.

Quick Research

Workflow

  1. Parse the query - Identify main topic, specific aspects, constraints
  2. Search - Run 2-4 searches with different query angles using available search tools
  3. Compile - Summarize key findings with sources
  4. Save (optional) - If substantial, save to research/output/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md

Output Format

## Research: <Topic>

### Key Findings
- Finding 1
- Finding 2

### Sources
- [Title](url) - brief description

### Summary
2-3 sentence takeaway.

Deep Research

Workflow

  1. Parse the query - Extract main topic, key aspects, specific angles
  2. Plan search strategy - Identify 4-6 distinct search angles to cover the topic comprehensively
  3. Execute searches - Run parallel searches across different angles. If multiple research providers are configured (e.g., different AI APIs), fan out to each.
  4. Gather supplementary material - Fetch full content from the most relevant URLs found
  5. Synthesize - Combine findings from all sources into a coherent analysis. Deduplicate, attribute sources, note areas of consensus and disagreement.
  6. Save outputs - Write to research/output/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md
  7. Report - Summarize key findings, note where output was saved

Multi-Source Architecture

┌─────────────────┐
│  Research Query  │
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         v
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│         Search Strategy             │
│  (4-6 angles on the topic)          │
└────────┬────────────────────────────┘
         │
         v
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│        Parallel Research            │
│                                     │
│  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐        │
│  │ Source 1  │  │ Source 2 │  ...   │
│  │(web srch) │  │(API/tool)│        │
│  └────┬─────┘  └────┬─────┘        │
│       │              │              │
│       v              v              │
│   findings_1     findings_2         │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
         │
         v
┌─────────────────┐
│   Synthesis     │
│   (combined)    │
└─────────────────┘

Read the full file on GitHub · 131 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. 6d ago First seen · 131 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 24faeef8fba5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-agent is an agent published in the GitHub repository SterlingChin/marvin-template (1,017 stars, last pushed 18d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 951 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.